ITS EARLIEST STAGES. 125 



were rather the work of the imaginative and mythological tendencies 

 of man, than of mere convenience and love of arrangement. "The 

 constellations," says an astronomer of our own time, 27 " seem to have 

 been almost purposely named and delineated to cause as much confu- 

 sion and inconvenience as possible. Innumerable snakes twine through 

 long and contorted areas of the heavens, where no memory can follow 

 them : bears, lions, and fishes, large and small, northern and southern, 

 confuse all nomenclature. A better system of constellations might 

 have been a material help as an artificial memory." When men indi- 

 cate the stars by figures, borrowed from obvious resemblances, they are 

 led to combinations quite different from the received constellations. 

 Thus the common people in our own country find a wain or wagon, 

 or a plough, in a portion of the great bear. 28 



The similarity of the constellations recognized in different countries 

 is very remarkable. The Chaldean, the Egyptian, and the Grecian 

 skies have a resemblance which cannot be overlooked. Some have 

 conceived that this resemblance may be traced also in the Indian and 

 Arabic constellations, at least in those of the zodiac. 29 But while the 

 figures are the same, the names and traditions connected with them 

 are different, according to the histories and localities of each country j 30 

 the river among the stars which the Greeks called the Eridanus, the 

 Egyptians asserted to be the Nile. Some conceive that the Signs ot 

 the Zodiac, or path along which the sun and moon pass, had its 

 divisions marked by signs which had a reference to the course of the 

 seasons, to the motion of the sun, or the employments of the husband- 

 man. If we take the position of the heavens, which, from the knowl- 

 edge we now possess, we are sure they must have had 15,000 years 

 ago, the significance of the signs of the zodiac, in which the sun was, 

 as referred to the Egyptian year, becomes very marked, 31 and has led 

 some to suppose that the zodiac was invented at such a period. 

 Others have rejected this as an improbably great antiquity, and have 

 thought it more likely that the constellation assigned to each season 

 was that which, at that season, rose at the beginning of the night : 



37 Sir J. Herschel. 



M So also the Greeks, Homer, II. xvrn. 487. 

 "Aptcrov J)v KMJ &naav tirlK\ri(iiv 

 The Northern Bear which oft the Wain they call 

 Apicrof was the traditional name ; S^a^a, that suggested by the form. 



29 Dupnis, vi. 54S. The Indian zodiac contains, in the place of our Capricorn, a 

 *am and a fish, which proves the resemblance without chance of mistake. Bailly, 

 t. p. 157, 30 Dupuis, vi. 549. 31 Laplace, Hist.Astron. p. 8. 



