1891-92.] THE GREAT CENTRE; AN ASTRONOMICAL STUDY. 193. 
being visible all night long. He also found a three days’ feast observed 
in Australia in honour of the Pleiades, and traces of the primitive 
' Pleiades calendar he has discovered existing all over the world. These 
stars are apparently six in number; yet among civilized and savage races 
in Europe, in India, China, Japan, Africa and America this diminutive 
group is not merely regarded as seven stars, but what is more surprising, 
as “ The Seven Stars,” though the far brighter stars of the Great Bear 
might seem to deserve the title. In the Feast of Tabernacles, the Berber 
tribes build their temporary tents with a hole at the top, in order that the 
young men being instructed, may see the Pleiades passing overhead. 
The Jews were found to have the same custom. “ We can now under- 
stand,” says Haliburton, “the vestiges in Egypt of a popular belief that 
the Pleiades are in some way connected with the Great Pyramid, the 
existence of which was observed with feelings of surprise by Prof. 
Piazzi Smith.” 
Colonel Vyse is credited with noticing this phenomenon when making 
researches in Egypt some years since. Six of the pyramids at Gizeh 
have openings facing north, leading to straight passages which descend 
at inclinations of from 26° to 28°, the direction being parallel to the 
meridian. A person standing at the bottom and looking up, would have 
seen the Pleiades passing overhead when the Great Pyramid was built in 
2170 B.C. Prof. P. Smith suggests that its seven chambers commemo- 
rated the seven Pleiades. 
The Berbers of Morocco had a name for Alcyoné which was given 
because they said Paradise is there, and the Pleiades are the centre of all 
things. In Sahara are ancient mosques and temples where the year is 
still regulated thus, there being a tube from the top of the building, small 
above and larger below, through which the southing of these stars is 
observed. 
“T am persuaded,” says Haliburton, “that the day is coming when the 
learned will admit that these stars are the ‘Central Sun’ of the religious 
calendars, myths, traditions and symbolism of early ages, an era however 
so marvellously remote that investigations respecting it bear the same 
relation to the study of anthropology and to the science of religion, that 
paleontology does to natural history.” 
The essayist said in concluding: We have now reached as far in our en- 
quiry as time will permit. It is admitted that it is still one of theory and 
speculation in advance of demonstrative and practical astronomy. Among 
objections to the selection of Alcyoné as Stellar Queen, may be that she 
is not of first astronomical rank, but of the third magnitude, while all the 
