Feb. 22, 1877] 



NATURE 



351 



Scotch Universities are, we all know, too poor to create 

 unattached professorships and endow them, standing as 

 they do rather in need of endowment. Is it equally 

 absurd to ask if one of the wealthy English Universities 

 would not consider it an honour to rank Edward among 

 its professors, and assist him to publish the observations 

 he may yet have time to make, or does it merely show 

 gross ignorance of the spirit in which they are governed 

 to suppose that either of them could so far depart from 

 the usual routine ? I suppose I am not the only country- 

 man of Edward who, having lived here long enough to learn 

 how poor Norway reals her great men, will regret— not 

 so much on account of Thomas Edward, for his has been 

 a great life and example, but in the cause of science — 

 that his lines have not fallen in pleasanter places." 



But Edward never complained of his lot, and had Mr. 

 Smiles not written the present work, he would have had to 

 stick to his stool to the end. All Edward ever wanted was 

 some way of earning a living that would have enabled him 

 to give more time and attention to his scientific pursuits, 

 and no one will deny that it would have been immensely to 

 the gain of science could his services have been devoted 

 entirely to it, for he was too passionately fond of nature 

 ever to have been spoiled by prosperity. But regrets are 

 now useless ; happily Edward is not beyond the reach 

 of consolation and well-merited reward, and happily he 

 is receiving them. He will be mentioned in the annals 

 of science as an observer of the highest accuracy and 

 originality, who gave up to a parish a genius fitted for an 

 immensely wider sphere. The obvious moral of the work 

 to those who have to spend most of their time in earning 

 their daily bread, as well as to others, we need not point 

 here. Mr. Smiles's work is one of the most interesting 

 biographies ever written, and the illustrations gratuitously 

 contributed by Mr. Reid are a great pleasure. Our readers 

 by buying the book will not only become possessed of a 

 rare treat, but will at the same time help to confer a 

 substantial benefit upon Thomas Edward, the Scottish 

 Naturalist. 



BLAKE'S "ASTRONOMICAL MYTHS" 



Astronomical Myths. Based on Flammarioii^ s " History 

 of the Heavens." By John F. Blake. (London : Mac- 

 millan and Co., 1877.) 



IN the continual turmoil of daily life, when each one is 

 looking forward to new methods and new discoveries 

 we seldom or never look back into the doings of our early 

 predecessors, and even when we do we are somewhat 

 inclined to pity their ignorance and their, to us, absurd 

 notions. We ought rather to call to mind the difficulties 

 under which the great men of old laboured, difficulties 

 under which our present IcaJcrs in astronomy would 

 probably have been equally sorely tried. We must re- 

 member that we have all the sister sciences lending their 

 aid, and that therefore the advance in astronomy should 

 be made with constantly increasing strides. 



The author of this work has put before us the labour of 

 M. Flammarion in an English dress, and has added other 

 matters — notably a chapter containing the researches of 

 Mr. Haliburton on the Pleiades, to many the most inter- 

 esting part of the book. We are carried back to the 

 time when nations thought as the child did in the lines of 

 Tom Hood, quoted by the author : — 



" I remember, I remember, the fir trees straight and high, 

 And how I thought their slender tops were close against the 



sky; 

 It was a childish fantasy, but now 'tis liitle joy, 

 To know I'm further off from heaven than when I was a boy." 



Mr. Blake commences by calling attention to the con- 

 templation by our ancestors of the awe-inspiring pheno- 

 mena of the heavens by night, the rising and setting of 

 the sun, moon, and planets, the slow and silent motion of 

 the constellations from east to west. To them the sky 

 was a lofty canopy studded with stars, the earth a vast 

 plain, the solid basis of the universe. Two distinct 

 regions appeared to compose the whole system — the upper 

 one, or the air, in which were the moving stars, and the 

 firmament over all ; and the lower one, the earth and 

 the sea. 



It is to be expected that in early times religious 

 beliefs and rites were mixed up with and were derived 

 from the motions and appearance of the heavenly bodies. 

 The Druids appear to have seen or imagined that the 

 moon was a body like the earth, having mountains, and, 

 according to Plutarch, furrowed with several Mediter- 

 raneans, which the Grecian philosophers compared to 

 the Red and Caspian seas. This celestial earth was 

 supposed by the western theologians to be the abode of 

 departed souls, the place of immortality. The festivals 

 were therefore ranged accordingly, and the Druids were 

 represented as holding a crescent in their hands. 



The origin of the names of the constellations has 

 always been a source of speculation, and the chapter 

 on this subject is well worth study. For the names of 

 several of them there appears to be some show of reason, 

 but others have been named from mere caprice, or in 

 honour of some person or event. In the case of the 

 " Locks of Berenice," the story goes that Berenice was the 

 spouse and sister of Ptolemy Euergetes, and that she 

 made a vow to cut off her locks and devote them to 

 Venus if her husband returned victorious, and, to con- 

 sole the king, the astrologer placed her locks among the 

 stars. The Great Bear, the "ApKro? neydXr] of the Greeks, 

 the Okouari (bear) of the Iroquois may have been so called, 

 as Aristotle observes, because the bear is the only animal 

 that dared venture into the regions of the north. The Arabs 

 called the bears the great and little coffins, and the Chris- 

 tian Arabs made the Great Bear the grave of Lazarus, and 

 the three weepers Mary, Martha, and their maid. 



The history of the signs of the zodiac is traced down- 

 wards in the several nations, and it is pointed out that 

 the names may have originated in the rising of constel- 

 lations at the times of certain important events, as Aqua- 

 rius at the time of the inundation at Thebes, and the Bull 

 at the time of ploughing, but this does not account for 

 all. Further, we find how the 'precession of the equi- 

 noxes furnishes us with a means of fixing the date of the 

 signs receiving their names ; at that date the names of 

 the signs of course corresponded to the zodiacal constel- 

 lations, and if we find in any description that the equinox 

 is said to be in the sign of the Bull we know that the 

 method of naming dates back to some 3,000 years ago, for 

 at that period the equinox happened in the constellation 

 of the Bull, According to our present nomenclature the 

 equinox happens in Aries, but really when the sun is in 

 Pisces ; our method therefore dates back to about 2,300 

 years ago when the equinox was in the constellation of 



