ascertain his exact position on the sea, and to shape his future course accordingly.

229. The loadstone, or magnetic needle, as it is also called, is usually placed in a frame, and covered by a glass. Beneath it, in the frame, are marked the 32 points of the compass; that is to say, the whole circle of the horizon is thus divided into 32 parts.

The principal of these are, the four cardinal points, the north, south, east, and west; and these are subdivided into north-east, north-west, south-east, and south-west, &c. &c.

Obs.-Annexed is the representation of this division; the boxing or repeating of which is, among young sailors, deemed a considerable achievement.

THE MARINER'S COMPAated millions; and the value of the shippi ployed, at about 25 millions.

222. The employments to which so trade gives rise, are, as far as regards the those of the ship-owner, the ship-build copper-smith, the rope-maker, the 1 baker, the provision-merchant, the sh penter, the anchor-smith, the mathe instrument-maker, and the slop-seller.

223. In regard to the cargo of ships, tl the merchant, the ship-broker, the fact manufacturer, the packer, and the light however, Among merchants, there are Spanishw render chants, Turkey merchants, Italian mercy, only, Russia merchants, Hamburgh merchants,

India merchants, American merchants, he is, by merchants, and African merchants.

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So it is with sailors: there are certain fixed objects out of the earth, as the sun, moon, planets, and stars; and by the position of these, a skilful sailor can always tell where he is.

231. If it appear by the almanac, that the sun is, on the 5th of June, at London, 61 degrees high at 12 o'clock, and a sailor, by his octant, finds it at that time to be 70 degrees high, he concludes that he is nine degrees, or 625 miles, nearer to the vertical place of the sun, or more to the south than London.

232. If it appear by an almanac, that at ten o'clock on the evening of June 5, that the moon comes to a conjunction with the planet Mars, at London, and a sailor find that the conjunction takes place at nine o'clock where he is, he concludes that he is one hour, or 15 degrees, or 1045 miles west of London.

233. A Nautical Almanac is published by government, expressly for the use of sailors; and is carried, in many curious particulars, to such a nicety, that by means of his octant, a telescope, and an accurate watch or time-piece, a sailor can now ascertain his position in any part of the seas within half a mile.

234. So expert are navigators become in our days, that a ship has sailed from Portsmouth to Calcutta in 55 days, a voyage which formerly employed six months; from Portsmouth to Malta in 11 days, formerly two months; to New York in 21 days, formerly two months; and to the West-Indies in 21 days, formerly two months.

Drake and Anson were three years in sailing round the world; and this is now frequent

performed by merchantmen, in nine or ten months.

XIII. Geography and Astronomy.

235. Geography describes the surface of the earth; the shape and size of the land and seas; the boundaries of nations, and their climate and natural productions.

It also teaches the character of the inhabitants; their government, religion, manufactures, and mode of living; and it ought to enable us to shun their errors, and profit by their experience.

Obs. As there are numerous works adapted for schools on this subject, and the details are very extensive and prolix; it would be trifling with the pages of this work, to dwell tediously on geography.

236. The earth, on which we live, is a round ball or globe, 8,000 miles in diameter, and 25,000 miles round. Its surface is covered with one part of land, and three parts of water, which are inhabited and filled with innumerable living creatures.

237. Of the internal parts of this immense, globe little is known to us. From the surface to the centre is 4,000 miles, yet no mine is a mile deep.

As far as man has penetrated, he has found successive layers or coats of different earths; lying over each other, like the coats of an onion, or the leaves of a book.

Obs. In digging wells, various thicknesses of different soils are found in different places, in an order something like the following: three feet of black earth, called vegetable mould, four of gravel, five of gravel and sand, six of clay, three of sea-shells, fifty feet of clay, forty of

sand, five of stone, three of marl, &c. &c.; and what is remarkable, every layer is the same thickness as far as it extends, and generally parallel with the surface of the earth. See my Grammar of Philosophy.

238. The highest mountains subtract no more from the roundness of the earth than the inequalities on the rind of an orange subtract from its general rotundity. Chimboraço, one of the Andes, rears its lofty head four miles high, yet this is but the two thousandth part of the earth's diameter.

Obs. The Peak of Teneriffe is but two miles and a half high; and Mount Etna and Mount Blanc not two miles. Our Snowdon is not three quarters of a mile; and but a grain of sand compared to the whole earth.

3

239. The mines, therefore, may be compared to the sting of a bee in the body of an elephant; and the mountains to the inequalities in the rind of an orange; yet, vast as is the earth, the sun, which lights and warms it, is one million times greater; or, in other words, one million earths united in one mass, would only be the size of the sun.

240. The land consists of two continents; the old continent of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the newly-discovered continent of America.

There are also many thousand islands surrounded by the sea; many of them, as Great Britain, anciently united to the continent, and others, the tops of mountains peeping out of the sea, the bases of which are at the bottom of the

ocean.

241. When a point of land juts out into the sea it is called a Cape or Promontory; as the Cape of Good Hope.

When two masses of land are joined together by a narrow slip, it is called an Isthmus; as the Isthmus of Suez, and the Isthmus of Panama.

A Peninsula is the smaller portion of the two, as the peninsula of Spain, in regard to Europe.

242. The waters are usually divided into four Oceans: the Great Ocean, ten thousand miles across; the Atlantic Ocean, three thousand miles across; the Indian and Southern Ocean; and the Northern Ocean.

Seas are detached pieces of water; as the Mediterranean and the Baltic.

Gulfs and Bays are parts of the sea that indent into the land.

And Straits are narrow passes joining one sea or ocean to another.

248. The vast SUN, to which we are under such sensible obligations, for light, heat, life, and vegetation; and without whose genial influ ence all the Earth would become a dark, solid mass of ice, is 900,000 miles in diameter; and the earth is 95 millions of miles distant from it.

244. The Sun is the centre of a vast system of planets, or globes like the earth; all of which move round his body at immense distances, in periods which include the various seasons to each, and are therefore a year to each.

Obs. They are all pressed to each other's centre; but the action of their fluid parts against their solid parts, gives them a tendency to go forward in a strait line; and those two forces so balance each other, that they neutralize one another, and, in consequence, the planets are moved round the sun in an orbit which is nearly circular. See 274.

245. The Sun has been commonly considered globe of pure fire. A number of macule