ccord with the notion of perpetual but partial alterations
finally bringing about a complete change. But the fiction
expressed in the verses before quoted from Menu of eternal
vicissitudes in the vigils and slumbers of Brahma seems
accommodated to the system of great general catastrophes followed
by new creations and periods of repose.

[20] Meteor. lib. i. cap. 12.

[21] De Die Nat.

[22] Lib. ii. cap. 14, 15, and 16.

[23] Lib. ii. cap. 14, 15, and 16.

[24] Omne ex integro animal generabitur, dabiturque terris homo
inscius scelerum.--Quaest. Nat. iii. c. 29.

[25] This author was Regius Professor of Syriac and Arabic at
Paris, where, in 1685, he published a Latin translation of many
Arabian MSS. on different departments of philosophy. This work
has always been considered of high authority.

[26] Gerbanitae docebant singulos triginta sex mille annos
quadringentos, viginti quinque bina ex singulis animalium
speciebus produci, marem scilicet ac feminam ex quibus animalia
propagantur, huncque inferiorem incolunt orbem. Absoluta autem
coelestium orbium circulatione, quae illo annorum conficitur
spatio, iterum alia producuntur animalium genera et species,
quemadmodum et plantarum aliarumque rerum, et primus destruitur
ordo, sicque in infinitum producitur.--Histor. Orient Suppl. per
Abrahamum Ecchellensem, Syrum Maronitam, cap. 7. et 8. ad calcem
Chronici Orientali. Parisiis, e Typ. Regia. 1685, fol.

I have given the punctuation as in the Paris edition, there being
no comma after quinque; but, at the suggestion of M. de Schlegel,
I have referred the number twenty-five to the period of years,
and not to the number of pairs of each species created at one
time, as I had done in the two first editions. Fortis inferred
that twenty-five new _species_ only were created at a time; a
construction which the passage will not admit. Mam. sur l'Hist.
Nat. de l'Italie, vol. i. p. 202.

[27] "Quod enim hoc attollitur aut subsidit, et vel inundat
quaedam loca, vel ab iis recedit, ejus rei causa non est, quod
alia aliis sola humiliora sint aut altiora; sed quod idem solum
modo attollitur modo deprimitur, simulque etiam modo attollitur
modo deprimitur, mare: itaque vel ex