140 COSMOS. 



enormous tail of a comet, whose head was concealed in the 

 vapory mist of the horizon, and which, from its length and 

 appearance, presented much similarity to the great comet of 

 1843. We may conjecture, with much probability, that the 

 remarkable light on the elevated plains of Mexico, seen for 

 forty nights consecutively in 1509, and observed in the eastern 

 horizon rising pyramidally from the earth, was the zodiacal 

 light. I found a notice of this phenomenon in an ancient Az- 

 tec MS., the Codex Telleriano-Reinensis* preserved in the 

 Royal Library at Paris. 



This phenomenon, whose primordial antiquity can scarcely 

 be doubted, and which was first noticed in Europe by Childrey 

 and Dominicus Cassini, is not the luminous solar atmosphere 

 itself, since this can not, in accordance with mechanical laws, 

 be more compressed than in the relation of 2 to 3, and conse- 

 quently can not be diffused beyond g^ths of Mercury's helio- 

 centric distance. These same laws teach us that the altitude 

 of the extreme boundaries of the atmosphere of a cosmical 



tron. Copernicance, t. i., p. 57, and t. ii., p. 893) speaks of the existence 

 of a solar atmosphere (limbus circa solem, coma lucida), which, in 

 eclipses of the Sun, prevents it ''from being quite night;" and even 

 more uncertain, or indeed erroneous, is the assumption that the " trabes 

 quas 6oKovg vocant" (Plin., ii., 2G and 27) had reference to the tongue- 

 shaped rising zodiacal light, as Cassini (p. 231, art. xxxi.) and Mairan 

 (p. 15) have maintained. Everywhere among the ancients the trabes 

 are associated with the bolides (ardores et faces) and other fiery mete- 

 ors, and even with long-barbed comets. ( Regarding doKog, doKiag, 

 doKLTijg, see Schafer, Schol. Par. ad Apoll. Rhod., 1813, t. ii., p. 206; 

 Pseudo-Aristot., de Mimdo, 2, 9 ; Comment. Alex. Joh. Philop. et Olymp. 

 in Aristot. Meteor., lib. i., cap. vii., 3, p. 195, Ideler; Seneca, Nat. 

 Quf£st., i., 1.) 



* Humboldt, Monumens des Peuples Indighies de V Amirique, t. ii.. 

 p. 301. The rare manuscnpt which belonged to the Archbishop of 

 Rheims, Le Tellier, contains various kinds of extracts from an Azt^ 

 ritual, an astrological calendar, and historical annals, extending from 

 1197 to 1549, and embx'aciug a notice of different natural phenomena, 

 epochs of earthquakes and comets (as, for instance, those of 1490 and 

 1529), and of (which are important in relation to Mexican chronology) 

 solar eclipses. In Camargo's manusci-ipt Historia de Tlascala, the light 

 rising in the east almost to the zenith is, singularly enough, described 

 as " sparkling, and as if sown with stars." The description of this 

 phenomenon, which lasted forty days, can not in any way apply to vol- 

 canic eruptions of Popocatepetl, which lies very near, in tlie southeast- 

 ern direction. (Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, vol. i., p. 

 284.) Later commentators have confounded this phenomenon, which 

 Montezuma regarded as a warning of his misfortunes, with the " estrella 

 que huraeava" (literally, which spring forth ; Mexican choloa, to leap or 

 spring forth). With respect to the connection of this vapor with the 

 star Citlal Choloha (Venus) and with " the mountain of the star" (Cit- 

 laltepetl, the volcano of Orizaba), see my Monumens, t. ii., p. 303. 



