THE PLAXETS. 441 



called by Lalande and Delambre, a play of numbers ; by 

 others, a help for the memory. It has greatly occupied our 

 laborious Bode, especially at the time that Piazzi discovered 

 Ceres : a circumstance, however, which was in no way occa- 

 sioned by that so called law, but rather by a misprint in 

 Wollaston's Catalogue of the Stars. If any one is inclined 

 to consider that discovery as the fulfilment of a prediction, it 

 must not be forgotten that the latter, as we have already 

 pointed out, extends back as far as Kepler, or more than a 

 century and a half beyond Titius and Bode. Although the 



. " Such a habit of deriving determinations of time from 

 epochs in the formation of the world, is an offspring of the 

 speculative period, in which all objects have still more 

 vitality, and is most closely allied to the genealogical local 

 poetry. So that it is not improbable that the tradition sung 

 by an Arcadian poet of the battle of the giants in Arcadia, 

 to which the above-quoted words of old Theodorus (whom 

 some consider to be a Samothracian, and whose work must 

 have been very comprehensive) refer, may have given occa- 

 sion to the general application of the epithet TrpoffeXrjvot to 

 the Arcadians." With regard to the double names ' Arkades 

 Pelasgoi,' and the opposition of a more ancient or recent 

 peopling of Arcadia, compare the excellent work, Der 

 Peloponnesos* by Ernst Curtius, 1851, pp. 160 and 180. 

 In the New Continent also there is, as I have already shown 

 in another place (see my Kleinen Schriften, Bd. i. p. 115), 

 upon the elevated plain of Bogota, the race of Muyscas, or 

 Mozcas, who in their historical myths boast of a proselenic 

 antiquity. The origin of the Moon is connected with the 

 tradition of a great flood, which a woman who accompanied 

 the miracle-worker Botschika had caused by her magical 

 arts. Botschika drove away the woman (called Huythaca or 

 Schia). She left the Earth, and became the Moon, " which 

 until then had never shone upon the Muyscas/' Botschika, 

 pitying the human race, opened a steep rocky wall near 

 Canoas, where the Rio de Tunzha now rushes down, forming 

 the famous waterfall of Tequendama. The valley, filled with 

 water, was then laid dry, a geognostic romance which occurs 

 repeatedly: for example, in the closed Alpine valley of 

 Casliinir, where the mighty drainer is called Kasyapa. 



