PRECESSION: AND THE PYRAMIDS 449 



PEECESSION: AND THE PYEAMIDS 



By Dr. PERCIVAL LOWELL 



BOSTON, MASS. 



TO be told that five thousand years ago the Southern Cross could have 

 been seen by one standing where London stands to-day would 

 certainly cause most people surprise. Nevertheless such was the fact. 

 That celestial asterism to which persons who have not seen it look 

 forward as to one of the revelations incident to voyages into the tropics 

 and then, on beholding it, feel egregiously duped, needed then no far 

 travel to disclose. The sad disillusioning caused by its rising could 

 have been enjoyed without leaving home. For 3000 B.C. its center-void 

 apology for the real thing might have been observed above the outline of 

 the South Downs at midnight at the proper season of the year by a star- 

 gazer at the then mute and inglorious Greenwich. 



If amazed at the apparition our tourist thus transported back in 

 time turned to get his bearings from the north, not less astonished 

 would he be to discover his old friend the pole-star unaccountably gone. 

 Even the learned might experience a shock. Certainly to those who drink 

 in their star-knowledge through the medium of the Dipper would it 

 prove disconcerting to find Polaris adrift in the sky. Its fixity fled, our 

 cynosure would indeed be difficult to detect. Just as mediocrity exalted 

 by office sinks into plucked insignificance once its insignia are removed. 

 Nor would he find the solace of familiarity anywhere else. For such 

 upsettings of fundamental fact would confront him everywhere. The 

 whole firmament would appear to be turned top?y turvy could we 

 suddenly be canopied by the heavens of those departed days. All the 

 constellations would seem askew even if he succeeded in making them 

 out. Nothing new under the sun ! perhaps ; but a very different state of 

 things under the midnight stars. 



Such a thorough change in outlook upon the universe is certainly no 

 mean event and serves to point the importance of a subject in astronomy 

 well worthy of engaging general attention, the more so that it is inti- 

 mately associated with man. For this revolution in the sky is brought 

 about by what is called the precession of the equinoxes. The name is 

 due to what first disclosed the action. Primitive man framed his 

 calendar by the stars. Not having the benefit of an Old Farmer's Almanac 

 with its superannuated tillage advice, the husbandman then judged his 

 seedtime and harvest by the constellations that rose in the morning just 

 before the sun. How long he placed implicit confidence in such chro- 



VOL. LXXX. — 30. 



