INTRODUCTION. PART I. Of Aftronomical Geography. PART III. Of the Origin and Progress of Religion Of the natural and Political Parts of EUROPE Turkey in Europe, the ancient Greece Turkish Islands in the Levant, being part of ancient Greece... +++ Other European Islands are described with the Countries to Tenneffee... Territory North West of the Ohio... General Defcription of the West Indies.. DIRECTIONS for placing the MAPS. The WORLD, To front the Title. GERMANY.... Page 507 CHART of the WORLD, accord-POLAND, LITHUANIA, and SEVEN UNITED PRO- WEST INDIES... VINCES, and NETHER 943 SOUTH AMERICA. The Binder is desired to beat the Book before he places the Maps. Crinceton. 7th June. 1006. INTRODUCTION. PART I. OF ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY. SECT. I. OF THE PLANETS, THE COMETS, THE FIXED STARS, AND THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF THE UNIVERSE. THE fcience of GEOGRAPHY cannot be completely understood without confidering the earth as a planet, or as a body moving round another at a confiderable diftance from it. It will therefore be neceffary to begin this work with a summary view of the science of ASTRONOMY, and a brief account of the planets and other heavenly bodies. Of thefe, the moft confpicuous is that glorious luminary, the fun, the fountain of light and heat to the feveral planets which move round it, and which, together with it, compose what aftronomers have called the Solar System. The way or path in which the planets move round the fun, is called their Orbit; and it is now fully proved by aftronomers, that there are feven planets which move round the fun, each in its own orbit. The names of thefe, according to their nearness to the centre or middle point of the fan, are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Georgium Sidus. The two firft, because they move within the orbit of the earth (being nearer the fun), are called inferior planets, or, perhaps more properly, interior or inner planets; the four laft, moving without the orbit of the earth, are called fuperior, or, perhaps, more properly, exterior or outer planets. If we can form an idea of the manner in which any one of thefe planets, fuppose our earth, moves round the fun, we can eafily conceive the manner in which all the reft perform a fimilar revolution. We fhall only, therefore, particularly confider the motion of the earth, or planet on which we live, leaving that of the others to be collected from a table, which we fhall give, with fuch explanations as may render it intelligible to the meaneft capacity. The earth was long confidered as one extenfive plane, of no remarkable thickness; and the regions below it were fuppofed to be the habita tions of fpirits. The heavens, in which the fun, moon, and stars, aps |