286 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



lected from among those of their lunar houses, for 

 reasons which it is impossible at the present day 

 to determine*? The absurdity which there 

 would have been in preserving for the constella- 

 tions, during 15,000 years, figures and symboli- 

 cal names which no longer presented any relation 

 with their position, would have been more evi- 

 dent had it been carried so far as to preserve to the 

 months those same names which were incessantly 

 in the mouths of the people, and whose inapti- 

 tude would be every moment perceived. 



And what, besides, would all these systems 

 come to, had the figures and the names of the 

 zodiacal constellations been given to them with- 

 out any relation to the course of the sun ; as 

 their inequality, the extension of several of them 

 beyond the zodiac, and their manifest connection 

 with the neighbouring constellations, seem to de- 

 monstrate was the case f . 



What would still happen, if, as Macrobius ex- 

 pressly says J, each sign must have been an em- 



* See the Memoir of Sir William Jones on the Antiqui- 

 ty of the Indian Zodiac. Calcutta Memoirs, vol. ii. 



t See the Zodiac explained, or Researches regarding the 

 Origin and Signification of the Constellations of the Greek 

 Sphere, translated from the Swedish of M. Swartz ; Paris, 

 1809. 



J Saturnalia, lib. i. cap. xxi. sub. fin. Nee solus Leo, 



