[footnote] *The 'Margarita Philosophica' of Gregory Reisch, prior of the Chartreuse at Freiburg, first appeared under the following title: Aepitome omnis Philosophiæ, alias Margarita Philosophica, tractans de omni generi scibili. The Heidelberg edition (1486), and that of Strasburg (1504), both bear this title, but the first part was suppressed in the Freiburg edition of the same year, as well as in the twelve subsequent editions, which succeeded one another, at short intervals, till 1535. This work exercised a great influence on the diffusion of mathematical and physical sciences toward the beginning of the sixteenth century, and Crasles, the learned author of 'L'Aperçu Historique des Methodes en Géometrica' (1837) has shown the great importance of Reisch's 'Encyclopedia' in the history of mathematics in the Middle Ages. I have had recourse to a passage in the 'Margarita Philosophica', found only in the edition of 1513, to elucidate the important question of the relations between the statements of the geographer of Saint-Die, Hylacomilus (Martin Waldseemuller), the first who gave the name of America to the New Continent, and those of Amerigo Vespucci, Rene, King of Jerusalem and Duke of Lorraine, as also those contained in the celebrated editions of Ptolemy of 1513 and 1522. See my 'Examen Critique de la Gegraphie du Nouveau Continent, et des Progres de l'Astronomie Nautique aux 15e et 16e Siecles', t. iv., p. 99-125. [footnote] II Ampère, 'Essai sur la Phil. des Sciences', 1834, p. 25. Whewell, 'Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences', vol. ii., p. 277. Park, 'Pantology', p. 87. p 59 The selection of an inappropriate Greek nomenclature has perhaps been even more prejudicial to the last of these attempts than the injudicious use of binary divisions and the excessive multiplication of groups. The physical description of the world, considering the universe as an object of the external senses, does undoubtedly require the aid of general physics and of descriptive natural history, but thecontemplation of all created things, which are linked together, and form one 'whole', animated by internal forces, given to the science we are considering a peculiar character. Phyical science considers only the general properties of bodies; it is the product of abstraction -- a generalization of perceptible phenomena; and even in the work in which were laid the first foundations of general physics, in the eight books on physics of Aristotle,* all the phenomena of nature are considered as depending upon the primitive and vital action of one sole force, from which emaate all the movements of the universe. [footnote] * All changes in the physical world may be reduced to motion. Aristot., 'Phys. Ausc.', iii., 1 and 4, p. 200, 201. Bekker, viii., 1, 8, and 9, p. 250, 262, 265. 'De Genere et Corr.', ii., 10, p. 336. Pseudo-Aristot., 'De Mundo.' cap. vi., p. 398.