: 1507] published a large
map of the world in twelve sheets and a small globe about 4 1/2 inches
in diameter, in which the new world is for the first time called
America. The next great advance was made by the Flemish cartographer
Gerard Mercator [Sidenote: Mercator, 1512-94] whose globes and
maps--some of them on the projection since called by his name--are
extraordinarily accurate for Europe and the coast of Africa, and fairly
correct for Asia, though he represented that continent as too narrow.
He included, however, in their approximately correct positions, India,
the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, Java and Japan. America is very poorly
drawn, for though the east coast of North America is fairly correct,
the continent is too broad and the rest of the coasts vague. He made
two startling anticipations of later discoveries, the first that he
separated Asia and America by only a narrow strait at the north, and
the second that he assumed the existence of a continent around the
south pole. This, however, he made far too large, thinking that the
Tierra del Fuego was part of it and drawing it so as to come near the
south coast of Africa and of Java. His maps of Europe were based on
recent and excellent surveys.

[Sidenote: Astronomy]

Astronomy, the oldest of the sciences, had made much progress in the
tabulation of material. The apparent orbits of the sun, moon, planets,
and stars had been correctly observed, so that eclipses might be
predicted, conjunction of planets calculated, and that {617} gradual
movement of the sun through the signs of the zodiac known as the
precession of the equinoxes, taken account of. To explain these
movements the ancients started on the theory that each heavenly body
moved in a perfect circle around the earth; the fixed stars were
assigned to one of a group of revolving spheres, the sun, moon and five
planets each to one, making eight in all. But it was soon observed
that the movements of the planets were too complicated to fall into
this system; the number of moving spheres was raised to 27 before
Aristotle and to 56 by him. To these concentric spheres later
astronomers added eccentric spheres, moving within others, called
epicycles, and to them epicycles of the second order; in fact
astronomers were compelled:

To build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances, to gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.

The complexity of