100 
NATURE 
[Dec. 1, 1881 
value of this work will be perceived when it is remem- 
bere! that at no time since relations commenced between 
China and the West has the former been so powerful—we 
~had almost said aggressive—as now, She is drawing 
closer to us as time goes on, but there is no evidence that 
the tenacity of her hold on her ancient political doctrines 
is relaxing. For those who will give it careful study Mr. 
Faber’s work is one of the most valuable of the excellent 
series to which it belongs. 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[The Editor doe. not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 
or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts, 
No notice is taken of anonymous communications, 
[Vhe Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep their letters 
as short as possible. The pressuve on his space is so great 
that it is impossible otherwise to ensure the appearance even 
of communications containing interesting and nevel facts. ] 
Primitive Traditions as to the Pleiades 
In De. Tylor’s recentreview in NATURE (vol. xxiv. p. 529) of 
Mr, Dawson’s work on the ‘‘ Folk-Lore of the Natives of Vic- 
toria,” he refers to their tradition of ‘‘the lost Pleiad,” and 
assumes that it must have been borrowed by them from Euro- 
peans. The indefatigable Astronomer Royal for Scotland, con- 
ceiving that my researches as to the Pleiades, and especially 
as to traditions respecting those stars among the Australians, 
had been inproperly ignored, wrote a letter to the Editor of 
NAtuRE, which, having been submitted to Dr. Tylor, was sent 
to my Canadian address, with his reply, by Prof. Piazzi Smyth, 
and has only reached me within the past week. 
Dr, Tylor states that he has frequently heard of my researches 
respecting the Pleiades, but has never met with any publication 
of mine on the subject ; and that he would be much surprised 
if I could show that the story of the ‘Lost Pleiad ” is really a 
primitive and original myth of savages. 
Before touching on that point I think it but right to say that, so 
far from feeling aggrieved by the omission, I am afraid that I 
rather owe an apology to Ds, Tylor and to anthropologists for 
not having long ago published the results of my labours. 
If a paper on the subject would have been only read and 
used by Tylors and F.R.S.s., I should long ago have given them 
the sustance of the fruits of my investigations, Unfortunately 
there are scores of imaginative persons who have a fondness for 
discussing scientific novelties, without having the caution and 
training necessary for such work, Hence the unfortunate dis- 
coverer or explorer of any new and difficult field of research is 
apt to find that, long before he feels justified in inviting the 
attention of the scientific world to his favourite subject, it has 
been invaded and discredited by hasty theorists; and that his 
first work is the unpleasant task of clearing the field of the 
rubbish with which it has been encumbered. 
Now there are few subjects as to which greater caution is 
needed than that of anthropology, and especially that branch 
which deals with the myths and religious ideas of savages. Dr. 
Tylor’s works are therefore very satisfactory, as they contain a 
vast mass of facts, and evince an entire absence of fanciful or 
hasty theories. Had I confined my researches to the study of 
the folk-lore of savages I should never have supposed that the 
Pleiades deserve the prominence which my conclusions haye 
assigned to them. 
As my researches are unknown to most persons, and only im- 
perfectly known to a few through my privately printed journals 
of investigations, letters, &c., having been partially published by 
others, permit me to explain the course of my investigations, and 
the grounds for my conclusions as to the Pleiades and their 
influence on the calendars and mythologies of nations, 
It is now almost a lifetime, some thirty years ago, since I first 
noticed the universality of the number seven on ancient symbo- 
lism. As seven stars frequently met me as an architectural 
symbol, or a religious emblem in the New World, as well as in 
the Old, sometimes too in connection with the prehistoric cross, 
I suspected that these stars must have been the Pleiades, and 
that they must have in some way consecrated that symbol and 
the number seven, a number, too, which I had noticed as being 
prominent in the grouping of some prehistoric structures. Why 
such apparently unimportant stars shonld have once acquired 
such world-wide significance I was utterly unable even to offer a 
conjecture. 
After corresponding with Mr. Pre cott, Sir Austin Layard, 
and others on this subject, I made up my mind that I had got 
hold of the wrong end of a very important inquiry, and that for 
years to come I must carefully collect facts and religiously avoid 
hasty generalisation. 
On subsequently paying my first visit to England the late Sir 
Henry Ellis, the editor of “ Brand’s Popular Antiquities,” re- 
quested me to prepare a paper on the coincidences of customs 
among savages and civilised nations, and I accordingly selected 
those connected with the Feast of Ancestors, as I fouud that my 
references and notes on it were very numerous. 
I had previou-ly noticed that a Spanish Jesuit missionary had 
expressed surprise that the Peruvians and Christians observed 
the feast of the dead on the same day—the second of November. 
I of course looked on the coincidence as purely accidental, but 
when IJ had written a paper giving the results of wy notes, to 
my great amazement I found that this coincidence was very 
widely spread, and that the feast of ancestors was very generally 
held about the beginning of November. Here then was a truth 
not hitherto ‘‘dreamed of in our philosophy”; and I therefore 
thought it prudent to defer reading my paper until I could solve 
the mystery. 
How could this singular coincidence have been caused and 
preserved throughout the world, in the northern as well as in 
the southern hemisphere? It was plain that this festival must 
have been regulated by something very simple and plain, such 
as the rising of some star. If this was the case, then it was 
equally clear that that star must have been very carefully observed 
throughout the world, and may therefore have become an object 
of peculiar reverence. I at once thought of the widespread 
symbolism of the Seven Stars, which I had long before noticed, 
and therefore, as I was not an astronomer, I asked Prof. Everett, 
F.R.S., then a professor in King’s College, Windsor, Nova 
Scotia, whether the Pleiades could ever have risen in November. 
He of course replied in the negative, for it mu-t have been at 
least twelve thousand years s’nce those stars rose helia cally at 
that time of the year, I had, however, my conjecture fully con- 
firmed by finding that in one of the most ancient calendars 
in the world, that of the Brahmins of Tirvalore, the name of 
Noveinber was Kartica (‘‘the month of the Pleiades”). I sub- 
sequently found a year, still in use in Polynesia, regulated by the 
rising of the Pleiades at sunset, or by their being visible all night 
long, and I also discovered that the three days’ feast of the dead 
was also held in November by the Australian savages as a great 
annual corroboree in honour of the Pleiades. Since then I have 
found this primitive calendar, or fossil traces of it, all over the: 
world. 
IT also found that early astronomers constructed great years or 
cycles on the basis of this simple calendar, which were also 
regulated by the Pleiades, With this calendar and its festivals 
and these cycles I found flood traditions and primitive myths 
associated, and that the key to some of the most remarkable 
features in early religions and traditions is to be found in the 
year of the Pleiades. 
In 1863 I printed privately a paper of 103 pages on the Feast 
of the Dead, and the calendar of which it was a new year’s 
festival, and in 1864 a second paper on the connection of the 
Pleiades with the cycles of the ancients and with prehistoric 
chronology. 
As Prof, Piazzi Smyth, in 1865, was intending to carefully 
measure and examine the Great Pyramid, I sent him a copy of 
my papers, as I believed that my early impressions as to the con- 
nection of the Pleiades with primitive architecture wou!d prove 
to be well founded, In his work on the Pyramid he republished 
seventy pages of my first paper, my request that it should not be 
published having fortunately reached him too late. 
My excuse for this long delay is the desire, before publishing 
my conclusions, to work out many interesting problems connected 
with the Pleiades and early myths and religious beliefs, and the 
great difficulty of such inquiries ; for the era when the Pleiades 
thus left their impress on the calendars and traditions of nations 
must be very remote, so much so that such researches are like 
investigations into the fossils that tell of organisms that lived in 
a world and breathed an atmosphere different from our own. 
I am, however, preparing at last to bring out a work which 
will deal with the connection of the Pleiades, first, with the 
calendars, festivals, and cycles of nations; and next, with the 
myths and traditions associated with the year of the Pleiades, I 
