176 



* KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[June 1, 1888. 



heavens as the man part of the Centaur, with his spear and 

 offering for sacrifice. Standing upright, some twenty-five 

 decrees in height, and so that as seen from the ascending 

 passage of the Great Pyramid, he just stood, when due 

 touth, within the portion of the heavens commanded by the 

 srrand eallery, this stellar figure must have presented 

 stroncrly the idea of a man offering sacrifice — at least to a 

 race accustomed to see their priests daily engaged in sacri- 

 ficial observances. 



But the Altai-, where is that t The constellation of the 

 Altar is there still, both in the heavens and in our maps. 

 But since the fifteenth century the altar has always been 

 represented upside down, insomuch that the Centaur is 

 represented as carefully applying a wolf to the altar's in- 

 verted base, a proceeding which would have seemed un- 

 reasonable even to one of the drunken Lapithre. However, 

 there is luckily no sort of doubt that this arrangement of 

 the altar is only a " modern improvement." The Farnese 

 globe shows the Altar upright — that is, as upright as it 

 could be since the precession of the equinoxes tipped it over. 

 Manilius distinctly suggests its uprightness when he speaks 

 of the Altar as 



Ara, ferens thuris, stellis imitantibus, iijnem. 

 For an inverted Altar could not have been seen as bearing any- 

 thing. Turning to the heavens of 3400 or 3500 B.C., we find 

 the Altar truly upright, and we see the smoke of the incense, 

 imitated by stars in the rich streams of the IMilky Way, 

 which extend from the altar like ascending clouds and 

 wreaths of smoke, over the Scorpion on one side and over 

 Sagittarius on the other. The brightest galactic stream 

 here is that over Sagittarius, where, indeed, the 'Milky Way 

 has at once its most resplendent and its most variegated 

 aspect. The incense smoke from the altar on the side 

 towards Scorpio fades off into the dark background of the 

 sky, but on the side towards Sagittarius there is a bright 

 and continuous stream, gathering in places into I'ich cluster- 

 ing masses. 



The sacrifice of Noah is accepted by Deity, the smoke 

 bearing the essence of the fire-consumed flesh was of a sweet 

 savour in His nostrils, to use the quaint expression of later 

 Bible writers. " And God said," says the ancient record we 

 are following, " This is the token of the covenant which I 

 make between Me and you and every living creature that is 

 ■with you for perpetual generations : I do set my bow in the 

 cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me 

 and the earth." It may be regarded as a mere coincidence, 

 though strange as coming after the coincidences already 

 noted, but certain it is that in the cloud rising from the 

 Altar, the bow of Sagittarius was recognised by the ancient 

 worshippers of the sun and moon and stars. There is the 

 figure of a man or god, standing on the other side of the 

 Altar, facing the man who offers sacrifice (coining upright, 

 like him, on the meridian of the time we are considering), 

 and this figure holds out in the cloud from the Altar a celes- 

 tial bow (twenty degrees in length), which might well have 

 been regarded by the astronomical priests of those days as 

 typifying the rainbow, and its promise as recorded in the 

 ancient story of the flood. 



And here in the stellar skies, as in the detailed 

 record, the year has completed its full circle. Imme- 

 diately beyond the figure of the being holding the bow, 

 we come upon the constellation of the Sea-goat, where 

 the story of the flood begins again in the heavens. 

 On the seventeenth day of the second month the flood 

 began, according to the record in Genesis, on the seven 

 and twentieth day of the second month was the earth diy — 

 a year of twelve lunar months had passed, 354 days (the 

 354 ropes of the old sun-ship story), and in addition eleven 

 days, completing the solar year of 365 days. If we have I 



not here a solar myth, pictured in the stellar heavens, and, 

 as it were, reflected in the terrestrial skies, and the annual 

 floods of Mesopotamia, then it would seem as though all 

 belief in solar myths and nature myths must be rejected ; 

 for certainly in not one single case have the believers in 

 such myths found such evidence as we have found here. 

 I do not say that no such evidence might be collected for 

 those other myths. 1 believe that by the help of astro- 

 nomical research the evidence of those myths can be greatly 

 strengthened. But certainly in the present case, the first I 

 think which has ever been dealt with in this manner, the 

 evidence seems very striking. If it is all to be exi)lained 

 away as due to mere chance coincidence, then must the 

 coincidence be regarded as so remarkable, that even as such 

 it is well worth studying. 



GROWTH OF THE ALPS.* 



HE Alps have been studied longer and more 

 thoroughly than any others of the great 

 mountain ranges of the earth. Their struc- 

 ture is, in fact, typical. Although it is 

 now considered doubtful whether any of 

 the exposed portions of the Alps can be 

 regarded as of Archaean age, there is 

 absulutel}' decisive evidence of the growth of the Alps from 

 Silurian strata through all the higher primary formations, 

 and thence upwards and onwards through the secondary 

 and tertiary periods to the great glacial age which was, as it 

 were, the threshold of the period through which Europe is 

 now passing. The record we have to read is necessarily 

 imperfect. The forces by which stratified rocks are sub- 

 jected to plications and fractures have acted with amazing 

 energy on the Alpine strata. The characteristic features of 

 the lower strata have gradually disappeared among those of 

 the crystalline masses forced through them. " The whole 

 geological aspect of these mountains," says Professor A. 

 Geikie, " is suggestive of former intense commotion." The 

 record has also been in large part destroyed by denuda- 

 tion. '• Twisted and crumpled," Professor Geikie proceeds, 

 " the solid sheets of limestone may be seen as it were to 

 writhe from the base to the summit of a mountain ; yet 

 they present everywhere their truncated ends to the air, 

 and from these ends it is easy to see that a vast amount of 

 material has been worn away. Apart altogether from what 

 may have been the shape of the ground immediately after 

 the upheaval of the chain, there is evidence on every side of 

 gigantic denudation. The sub-aerial forces that have been 

 at work upon the Alpine surface ever since it first appeared 

 have dug out valleys, sometimes acting in original depres- 

 sions, sometimes eroding hollows down the slopes. More- 

 over, they have planed down the flexures, excavated lake 

 basins, scarped the mountain sides into clifi" and cirque, 

 notched and furrowed the ridges, splintered the crests into 

 chasm and aiguille, until no part of the original surface now 

 remains in sight." 



But though the Alps thus " remain a monument of 

 stupendous earth-throes, followed by prolonged and gigantic 

 denudation," they yet attest with sufiicient clearness the 

 processes by which the material of their structure was 

 originally formed. The volumes in which the record was 

 written are all more or less incomplete, but none are abso- 

 lutely missing — unless it be the first, if we can speak of 

 the first volume of a series which in point of fact can scarcely 

 be said to have had a beginning. 



* Chiefly from an article on "The Everlasting Hills," in the 

 Fortnight!!/ Itevierc. 



