THEORY OF THE EARTH. 235 



concluded from thence, that, at the beginning, Ca- 

 pricorn itself was at the summer solstice, and so 

 of the other signs, as Dupuis had supposed. 



But, independently of all that there is merely 

 conjectural in these etymologies, Raige did not 

 perceive that it was simply by chance that, five 

 years after the battle of Actium, in the year 25 

 before Christ, at the establishment of the fixed 

 year of Alexandria, the first day of Thoth was 

 found to correspond with the 29th of the Julian 

 August, and continued to correspond since that 

 time. It is only from this epoch that the Egyp- 

 tian months commenced at fixed days of the Ju- 

 lian yean and only at Alexandria : even Pto- 

 lemy did not the less continue to employ in his 

 Almagest the ancient Egyptian year with its 

 vague months *. 



Why might not the names of the signs have 

 been given to the months at some epoch, or the 

 names of the months to the signs, in the same ar- 

 bitrary manner in which the Indians have given 

 to their twenty-seven months twelve names, se- 



* See the Historical Researches regarding the Astrono- 

 mical Observations of the ancients, by M. Ideler, a trans- 

 lation of which has been inserted by M. Halraa in the third 

 volume of his Ptolemy : and especially M. Freret's memoir 

 on the opinion of Lanauze, relative to the establishment of 

 the Alexandrian year, in the memoirs of the Academy of 

 Belles Lettres, vol. xvi. p. 308, 



