ALBERTUS MAGNUS.

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Habes in hac pagina, amice lector... De natura locorum. First edition of Albertus Magnus's treatise De Natura Loci ("On the Nature of Place"), originally written between 1248 and 1252, important not only as the first Western work to consider geography as a separate discipline but as the first attempt at a comparative geography. Albertus Magnus (c.1200-1280), a German Dominican friar, philosopher and scientist, was one of the most accomplished scholars of the Middle Ages, particularly noted for his contributions to the natural sciences. The present work was edited in 1514 by Georg Tannstetter (1482-1535), also called Georgius Collimitius, a humanist teaching at the University of Vienna. He was a medical doctor, mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, and the personal physician of the emperors Maximilian I and Ferdinand I. In the work, Albertus Magnus describes how geographic factors, such as the height above sea level, proximity to the sea, mountains and vegetation, influence climate. He also considers life at the equator and the poles, assuming that the poles would be uninhabitable with half the year being day and half the year being night. In chapter VII, entitled: "As to whether the fourth part of the world is inhabitable, which stretches from beneath the Equinoctial pole to the Austral pole", Albertus wrote that the southern hemisphere would be habitable. This passage is marked by Tannstetter on leaf D4r with a marginal note, apparently inserted with movable type after th

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