FISHES IN ARTS AND SCIENCES. 45 



signs trace back — through the origin of Egyptian animal 

 worship — through old Israel's twelve coincidences in the 

 naming * of his sons — through the zodiac of Denderah, 

 eight centuries before our era — to the very alphabet and 

 rudiments of Aryan science ? 



What antiquities, then, they are, these sea-myths of our 

 stellar hemispheres ! Tumbling in open space, the happy 

 Dolphin, belted with stars, the gift of grateful Olympus ; 

 the luminous Sea-lizard ; Cetus, the shaggy whale, spangled 

 from twinkling snout to twinkling tail, that, but for the strong 

 bright-fronted Ram that intervenes, seems agape to swallow 

 the suppliant Andromeda ; Hydra, dripping stars as it 

 goes, and trailing its gem-lit convolutions across the hemis- 

 pheres ; the Flying-fish,t feathered and beaked, darting its 

 brief flight from the pole of the southern ecliptic ; the 

 austral Fish, with radiant eyes uplifted to the grateful flood 

 that the Waterer for ever pours upon it ; the Sword-fish, 

 cleaving its bright way to encounter in the ocean of the 

 firmament its hereditary foe ; the Tortoise, that in its 

 starry concave holds the lyre whence Mercury first struck 

 the music of the spheres. 



Above all, The Fishes of the Zodiac — 



" The double Pisces, from their shining scale, 

 Spread wat'ry influence and incline to sail "J — 



foster the sailor-spirit in men and teach navigators to be 



* Zabulun, " that dwells at the haven of the sea," stands for the sign 

 Pisces. 



t So Pantagruel. " I saw here the sea-swallow, a fish as large as 

 a dare-fish of Loire." In Chaldasan astronomy the northern of the 

 Pisces is swallow-headed, as heralding the arrival of summer and its 

 bird. 



X This and succeeding quotations arc from the translation of 

 Manilius' poem by Creech. 



