The Philosopher, on moving the question of why the sea is salt, relates that, when Phoebus handed over the reins of his light-shedding chariot to Phaeton his son, he, unskilled in the art and not knowing how to follow the ecliptic between the two tropics of the sun’s sphere, wandered from his path and drew so close to the Earth that he desiccated all the subjacent lands, scorching that large segment of the heavens which philosophers call the Milky Way and the foolosophers Saint James’s Road [whereas the most tufted poets say that it is where Juno let her milk dribble down as she was giving
...more
