CONCERNING ANCIENT INDIA. Si

after the change , and continued to be visibleonly to the sixteenth Jt is surprising to, findan author so intelligent as Pliny relating all thesecircumstances without animadversion, and particu-larly that he does not take notice, that what theambassadors reported concerning the appearanceof the moon, could not take place in any regionof the earth.

Ptolemy, though so near to the age of Pliny,seems, to have been altogether unacquainted withhis description of Faprobane, or with the embassyto the emperor Claudius. Be places that islandopposite to Cape Comor-n , at no great distancefrom the continent, and delineates it as stretch-ing from north to south no less than fifteen degrees,two of which he supposes to be south oi theEquator ; and if his representation of its dimen-sions had been just , it was well entitled from itsmagnitude to be compared with Britain'". Agathe-merus, who wrote after Ptolemy , and was wellacquainted with his geography, considers Tapro-bane as the largest of all islands, and assigns toBritain only the second place S °.

From this diversity of the descriptions givenby ancient writers, it is not surprising that themoderns should have entertained very differentsentiments with respect to the island in the Indian

" Nat. Hist. lib. vi. c. 22.

" Ptol. lib. vii. c. 4. D’Anville , Ant. de 1’sndeg•p. 142.

5 ° Lib. ii. c. 8. apud Hudson. Geogr. Minor. vol. ii.

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