NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

22 2

K of the country , the south is called Dachanos; ” Peripl.p. 29. As the Greeks and Romans , when they adopetedany foreign name, always gave it a termination peculiarto their own language, which the grammatical structure ofboth tongues rendered, in some degree, necessary , it isevident that Dachanos is the fame with Deccan, whichword has still the fame signification, and is still the n.:meof that division of the Peninsula, The northern limit ofthe Decc-an at present is the river Nerbuddah , where ourAuthor likewise sixes it. Peripl. ibid.

NOTE XXXIV. Sect. II. p, 87.

Though, in deducing the latitudes of places from observa-tions of the sun or stars, the ancient astronomers neglectedseveral corrections, which ought to have been applied,their results were sometimes exact to a few minutes., butat other times they appear to have been erroneous to theextent of two , or even three degrees, and may perhapsbe reckoned, one with another, to have come within halfa degree of the truth. This part of the ancient geographywould therefore have been tolerably accurate, if there hadbeen a sufficient number of such determinations. These,however, were far from being numerous , and appear tohave been confined to some of the more remarkable placesin the countries which surround the Mediterranean sea.

"When , from want of more accurate observations, thelatitude was inferred from the length of the longest orshortest day, no great degree of precision was, in anycafe , to be expected, and least of all in the vicinity ofthe Equator. An error of a quarter of an hour, which ,without some mode of measuring time more accurate thanancient observers could employ, was not easily avoided ,might produce, in such situations, an error of four degreesin the determination of the latitude.