The coming of the Pleiad-days of dry warmth and 

 Pleiad- beauty. The ' sweet influences ' of the Pleiades 

 ' thus indicated will come more familiarly to 

 many readers in Milton's 



" the grey 

 Dawn and the Pleiades before him danc'd, 

 Shedding sweet influence, . . ." 



This ancient custom, the ' Feast of Lamps,' 

 of the Western Hindus survives to-day in the 

 * Feast of Lanterns ' in Japan, though few 

 Europeans seem to perceive any significance 

 in that popular festival. 



In general, however, we find the advent of 

 the Pleiades concurrent, both in ancient and 

 modern tradition, with springs and rains and 

 floods : with the renewal of life. Thus the 

 comment in the old Breeches Bible, opposite 

 the mention of 'the mystic seven' in that 

 supreme line in Job : ' which starres arise when 

 the sunne is in Taurus, which is the spring 

 time, and bring flowres.' A Latin poet, in- 

 deed, used Pliada as a synonym of showers. 

 Again and again we find them as the Vergiliae, 

 Companions of the Spring. They are inti- 

 mately connected too with traditions of the 

 Deluge : and in this association, perhaps also 

 with that of submerged Atlantis, it is suggestive 

 to note that early in the sixteenth century 

 Cortez heard in that remote, mysterious Aztec 



270 



