the regions near the Pillars of Hercules (or Straits of Gibraltar) join on to India, and that the ocean to the east of India and that to the west of Europe are one and the same." In support of this proposition he adduces the fact that elephants are to be found on each side, i.e. in India and in Africa ('Heavens,' II. xiv. 15). The passage of Aristotle here quoted had a large share in inflaming the imagination of Christopher Columbus, and in sending him forth from the coasts of Spain in search of the coasts of India; and it was the cause of the islands of Central America being named the "West Indies," and the aborigines of North America being called "Red Indians." As an approximative guess at the size and figure of the earth, the passage in question was not a bad one, considering the time when it was written; but curiously enough it contains two errors, the first of which would imply the earth to be a great deal larger, and the second a great deal smaller, than it really is. The mean geographical stade of the Greeks is computed at 168 yards 1 foot and 6 inches, and thus if 400,000 stades be assigned to the circumference of the earth, we get a measurement of above 38,000 miles, whereas the latest calculations would only give about 24,857 miles for a mean circumference of the earth. Thus evidently the geometers of the time of Aristotle were too liberal in their ideas of the earth's size. But, on the other hand, those who identified the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean, and brought India opposite to Spain, had evidently too contracted a notion of the contents of our globe.
Owing to the absence of astronomical instruments,
