Note 13 — INTRODUCTION.

Thales, of Miletus in Ionia, was one of the seven sages of Greece: he was born about six hundred and forty years before the Christian era. After travelling into other countries, he returned to his own, and there devoted himself exclusively to the study of nature. Being the first of the Greeks who made any discoveries in Astronomy, he is said to have astonished his countrymen, by predicting a solar eclipse; and he instructed them, by communicating the knowledge of geometry and astronomy, which he had acquired while in Egypt. He died in the ninety-sixth year of his age,—544 years B. C.