,86 POPULAR SCIENCE AfOiVTHLY. 



exorcism ended with the sacrifice of a black hen; thereupon " Ka- 

 phael " went ont of her, and simultaneously with his exit all the 

 panes of glass in the house were broken into fragments and fell to 

 the ground with a tremendous crash. The marvel is that bishops 

 and priests accepted this ridiculous story as an authentic and edi- 

 fying narration, instead of rejecting it with horror and disgust as 

 a palpable burlesque of their own approved methods of casting out 

 demons, and particularly of the Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelas 

 Apostatas, composed by Leo XIII and issued by him November 

 19, 1890. It is evident that Taxil had this document in his eye, 

 and intended to hold it up to derision; to calm the fears of the 

 simple-minded, who were puzzled and perplexed by the striking 

 resemblance of diabolic orgies to divine ordinances, he explained 

 it ou the general principle that " Satan is the ape of God." 



After being freed from the influence of Raphael, Diana was 

 placed under the tutelage of Asmodeus, who, as her guardian devil, 

 watched over her, shielding her from bodily harm and helping her 

 to resist the wiles of angels. One day when she was wandering in 

 the woods she was attacked by negroes, but Asmodeus came to her 

 rescue, and bore her safely to her home through the air. Another 

 time he caught her mettlesome courser by the bridle as he was run- 

 ning away, and when the chief of Garibaldi's staff, Bordone, in- 

 sulted her, Asmodeus twisted his neck so that his face looked back- 

 ward. For three weeks he was obliged to take a retrospective view 

 of life and of his own conduct, when Diana, in the kindness of her 

 heart, set his head right again. On these occasions the tutelar 

 demon usually appeared in the form of a fine young gentleman, 

 and emitted an aroma of balsam, which seems to have been as in- 

 separable from him as is the scent of musk from a modern dude or 

 modish dame. He spoke of her as his bride, and often took her 

 on pleasure trips to paradise, purgatory, and other remote regions; 

 once when she was greatly depressed, because her Luciferian rival, 

 Sophia Walder, had got the better of her, he consoled her by 

 making an excursion with her to Mars, where they rode on Schia- 

 parelli's canals, sailed on the Sea of the Sirens, and strolled like 

 pygmies among the gigantic inhabitants of that planet. 



[To he conrl iiffrd .^ 



Contrary to the common supposition that the astronomy of the an- 

 cients was based exclusively on the geocentric hypothesis, Mr. G. H. Bryan 

 says in Nature: " Schiaparelli has shown that Heraclitus Ponticus, a dis- 

 ciple of Plato, had already accepted the theory that the sun is the center 

 of the orbit of the planets, while tlie earth is the center of the universe 

 and of the lunar and solar rotations — a theory substantially that of Tycho." 



