THEORY OF THE EARTH. 233 



the climate of that country. * The Capricorn, an 

 animal with the tail of a fish, would mark the 

 commencement of the rise of the Nile at the sum- 

 mer solstice; the Aquarius and Fishes, the progress 

 and diminution of the inundation ; the Bull, the 

 time of labouring ; the Virgin, the time of reap- 

 ing ; and they would mark them at the periods 

 when these operations actually took place. In 

 this system, the zodiac would have 15,000 years f 

 for a sun supposed at the first degree of each 

 sign, more than 16,000 for the middle, and 4000 

 only, on supposing that the emblem has been 

 given to the sign at the opposite of which the 

 sun was ^. It is to the 15,000 years that Du- 

 puis has attached himself; and it is upon this 

 date that he has founded the whole system of his 

 celebrated work. 



There are not wanting those, however, who, 

 admitting that the zodiac has been invented in 

 Egypt, have imagined allegories applicable to la- 

 ter times. Thus, according to Mr Hamilton, 

 the Virgin would represent the land of Egypt 

 when not yet fecundated by the inundation ; the 



* See the Memoir on the Origin of the Constellations, in 

 Dupuis's Origine des Cultes, vol. iii. p. 324. et seq. 

 t Id. ibid. p. 267. 



J Dupuis himself suggests this second hypothesis. Ibid, 

 p. 340. 



