Though the general meaning of the second couplet is obvious, the expression _il colco dell’Emme_, “the couch of the M,” is puzzling. The best solution that occurs to me is this: In looking at the world map of Marino Sanudo, noticed on p. _133_, as engraved by Bongars in the _Gesta Dei per Francos_, you find geometrical lines laid down, connecting the N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W. points, and thus forming a square inscribed in the circular disk of the Earth, with its diagonals passing through the Central Zion. The eye easily discerns in these a great M inscribed in the circle, with its middle angular point at Jerusalem. Gervasius of Tilbury (with some confusion in his mind between tropic and equinoxial, like that which Pliny makes in speaking of the Indian Mons Malleus) says that “some are of opinion that the Centre is in the place where the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria at the well, for there, at the summer solstice, the noonday sun descends perpendicularly into the water of the well, casting no shadow; a thing which the philosophers say occurs at Syene”! (_Otia Imperialia_, by Liebrecht, p. 1.) [4] This circumstance does not, however, show in the Vulgate. [5] “Veggiamo in prima in general la terra Come risiede e come il mar la serra. Un T dentro ad un O mostra il disegno Come in tre parti fu diviso il Mondo, E la superiore è il maggior regno Che quasi piglia la metà del tondo. ASIA chiamata: il gambo ritto è segno Che parte il terzo nome dal secondo AFFRICA dico da EUROPA: il mare Mediterran tra esse in mezzo appare.” —_La Sfera_, di F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati, Lib. iii. st. 11. [6] _De Civ. Dei_, xvi. 17, quoted by _Peschel_, 92. [7] _Opus Majus_, Venice ed. pp. 142, _seqq._ [8] _Peschel_, p. 195. This had escaped me. [9] By the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A., and the Rev. H. W. Phillott, M.A. In Asia, they point out, the only name showing any recognition of modern knowledge is Samarcand. [10] His work, _Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis_, intended to stimulate a new Crusade, has three capital maps, besides that of the World, one of which, translated, but otherwise in facsimile, is given at p. 18 of this volume. But besides these maps, he gives, in a tabular form of parallel columns, the reigning sovereigns in Europe and Asia connected with his historical retrospect, just on the plan presented in Sir Harris Nicolas’s Chronology of History. [11] I do not see that al-Birúni deserves the credit in this respect assigned to him by Professor Peschel, so far as one can judge from the data given by Sprenger (_Peschel_, p. 128; _Post und Reise-Routen_, 81–82.)