THEORY OF THE EARTH. 189 



the point where the sun rose each day, and 

 through ignorance identified with the heliacal 

 year of Sirius ; so that it would be mere chance 

 which had fixed with so much accuracy the dura- 

 tion of this latter for the period of which we 

 speak. * 



Perhaps it will also be judged, that men ca- 

 pable of making observations so exact, and which 

 they had continued during so long a period, 

 would not have attributed so much importance to 

 Sirius, as to pay him religious homage ; for they 

 would have seen that the relations of the rising of 

 this star with the tropical year, and with the inun- 

 dation of the Nile, were merely temporary, and 

 took place only in a determinate latitude. In 

 fact, according to M. Icfeler's calculations, in the 

 year 2782 before Christ, Sirius appeared in Up- 

 per Egypt, on the second day after the solstice ; 

 in 1322, on the third ; and in the year 139 af- 

 ter Christ, on the twenty-sixth.f At the present 

 day, its heliacal rising is more than a month af- 

 ter the solstice. The Egyptians would there- 

 fore set themselves by preference to finding the 

 period, which would bring about the coincidence 



* Delambre, Report upon M. de Paravey's Memoir re- 

 garding the Sphere, in the 8th vol. of the Nouvelles An- 

 nales des Voyages. 



t Ideler, loc. cit. p. 38. 



