December 28, 1893] 



NATURE 



199 



during which the cub protrudes the head from the belly of the 

 mother, in order to browse, and withdraws it afterwards. De- 

 sirous of being better informed, I asked the people of Siraf and 

 Oman, who visited this country, as well as merchants whom I 

 had met in India. They all told me that the rhinoceros breeds 

 just like the cow and the buffalo ; and I do not know where El 

 Djahiz has found this story, whether among his reading, or from 

 his inquiries." This is evidently an obscure tradition about the 

 Australian kangaroo, which had reached some part of Asia, 

 and was connected with the rhinoceros by people who knew 

 nothing about either of the two animal>. Has the attention 

 of zoologists been called to this story before? 



Heidelberg, Germany, C. R. Osten Sacken. 



December 5. 



On an Undescribed Rudimentary Organ in Human 

 Attire. 



Lecturers who are tired of the cockade hat-ribbon and tail 

 buttons, may be glad to know of the following rudiment. The 

 old-fashioned double eye-glass was a folder, with a knob at the 

 cuter side of the distal glass ; and this on folding locked against 

 a pin on the outer side of the proximal glass. The double eye- 

 glass of the present day does not fold ; but, none the less, is the 

 knob outside the distal glass retained for it, though there is no pin 

 to lock with on the proximal glass. How long will it take be- 

 fore this useless rudiment disappears ? What will be the cause 

 of its disappearance? As panmixia is out of the question, we 

 may prophesy that it will be economy of material. 



Cork, December 12. Marcus Hartog. 



EARLY ASTERISMS} 



III. 



The Constellations referred to in the Myth 0/ Marduk 

 and Tiuinat. 



WE are indebted to the myth, then, for the knowledge 

 that when it was invented the constellations Bull, 

 Scorpion, Goat, and Fishes had been established. 



This argument is strengthened by the following con- 

 siderations suggested by Jansen : — 



" We look in vain among the retinue of Tiamat for 

 an animal corresponding to the constellations of the 

 zodiac to the east of the vernal equinox. This cannot 

 be accidental. If therefore we contended that the cos- 

 mogonic legends of the Babylonians stood in close 

 relationship to the phenomena of sunrise on the one 

 hand and the entrance of the sun into the vernal equinox 

 on the other ; that, in fact, the creation legends in general 

 reflect these events, there could not be a more convincing 

 proof of our view than the fact just mentioned. The 

 three monsters of Tiamat, which Marduk overcomes, are 

 located in the ' water-region ' of the Heavens, which 

 the Spring Sun Marduk 'overcomes' before entering 

 the (ancient) Bull. If, as cannot be doubted, the signs 

 of the zodiac are to be regarded as symbols, and 

 especially if a monster like the goat-fish, whose form it 

 is difficult to recognise in the corresponding constellation, 

 can only be regarded as a symbol, then we may assume 

 without hesitation that at the time when the Scorpion, 

 the Goat-Fish, and the Fish were located as signs of the 

 zodiac in the water-region of the sky, they already played 

 their parts as the animals of Tifimat in the creation 

 legends. Of course they were not taken out of a com- 

 plete story and placed in the sky, but conceptions of a 

 more general kind gave the first occasion. It does not 

 follow that all the ancient myths now known to us must 

 have been available, but certainly the root-stock of them, 

 perhaps in the form of unsystematic and unconnected 

 single stories and concepts." 



There is still further evidence for the constellation of 

 the Scorpion. 



Jensen remarks : — 



1 Continued rom vol. xlviii. p. 520. 



NO. 1261, VOL. 49] 



" A Scorpion-Man plays also another part in the 

 cosinology of the Babylonians. The Scorpion-Man and 

 his wife guard the gate leading to the Masu mountain(s), 

 and watch the sun at rising and setting. Their upper 

 part reaches to the sky, and their irtti (breast?) to the 

 lower regions (Epic of Gistubar 60,9). After Gistubarhas 

 traversed the Masu Mountain, he reaches the sea. This 

 sea lies in the east or south-east. However obscure 

 these conceptions may be, and however they may render 

 a general idea impossible, one thing is clear, that the 

 Scorpion-Men are to be imagined at the boundary between 

 land and sea, upper and lower world, and in such a way 

 that the upper or human portion belongs to the upper 

 region, and the lower, the Scorpion body, to the lower. 

 Hence the Scorpion-Man represents the boundary 

 between light and darkness, between the firm land and 

 the water region of the world. Marduk, the god of light 

 and vanquisher of Tiamat, i.e. the ocean, has for a symbol 

 the Bull = Taurus, into which he entered in spring. This 

 leads almost necessarily to the supposition that both the 

 Bull and the Scorpion were located in the Heavens at a 

 time when the sun had its vernal equinox in Taurus and 

 its antumnal equinox in Scorpio, and that in their 

 principal parts or most conspicuous star groups ; hence 

 probably in the vicinity of Aldebaran and Antares, or at 

 an epoch when the principal parts of Taurus and 

 Scorpio appeared before the sun at the equinoxes." 



If my suggestion be admitted that the Babylonians 

 dealt not with the daily fight but with the yearly fight 

 between light and darkness — that is, the antithesis 

 between day and night was expanded into the antithesis 

 between the summer and winter halves of the year ; then 

 it is clear that at the vernal equinox Scorpio setting in the 

 west would be watching the sunrise ; at the autumnal 

 equinox rising in the east, it would be v/atching the sun- 

 set ; one part would be visible in the sky, one below the 

 horizon in the celestial waters. If this be so all obscurity 

 disappears, and we have merely a very beautiful state- 

 ment of a fact, from which we learn that the time to 

 which the fact applied was about 3000 B.C., if the sun 

 were then near the Pleiades. 



Jensen in the above-quoted passages by implication, 

 and in a subsequent one directly, suggests that not all 

 the zodiacal constellations were established at the same 

 time. The Babylonians apparently began with the easier 

 problem of having six constellations instead of twelve. 

 For instance, we have already found that to complete the 

 present number, between 



Scorpio. Capricornus. Pisces. 



we must interpolate 



Sagittarius. Aquarius. 



Aries and Libra seem also to be late additions accord- 

 ing to Jensen, who writes : — 



" We have already above (p. 90), attempted to explain 

 the striking phenomenon that the Bull and Pegasus, both 

 with half bodies only, rifj.iTOfj.oi, enclose the Ram be- 

 tween them, by the assumption that the latter was in- 

 terposed later on, when the sun at the time of the vernal 

 equinox stood in the hind parts of the Bull, so that this 

 point was no longer sufficiently marked in the sky. 

 Another matter susceptible of a like explanation may be 

 noted in the region of the sky opposite to the Ram and 

 the Bull. Although we cannot doubt the existence of an 

 eastern balance, still, as already remarked (p. 68), the 

 Greeks have often called it ^rj^al ' claws ' (of the Scor- 

 pion), and according to what has been said above 

 (p. 312), the sign for a constellation in the neigh- 

 bourhood of our Libra reads in the Arsacid inscription 

 ' claw(s) ' of the Scorpion. These facts are very 

 simply explained on the supposition that the Scorpion 

 originally extended into the region of the Balance, and 

 that originally a and ,3 Librse represented the ' horns ' 



