Nov. 13, 1879] 



NATURE 



3i 



■with that mentioned in Genesis as turning every way to 

 guard the tree of life ; he tells us that the Bel whom 

 Milton saw was Cromwell and the dragon the serpent of 

 English oppression ; and that to the Jews the power 

 of Christendom came to be represented as the reign 

 of Bel. But out of all this he obtains nothing further 

 than an identification of Bel with Michael in the 

 Apocalypse. This is sufficiently provoking when we 

 remember the astronomical and cosmical facts which 

 underlie the story. Were we possessed of no further 

 evidence than that afforded by the great pyramid, we 

 should be at no loss to perceive the anxious care with 

 which the heavenly bodies were observed by the ancients. 

 A star-group which specially claimed their attention was 

 the Pleiades. The Pleiades above the horizon were the 

 celestial, and below it the infernal gods. The period of 

 their culmination, typifying appropriately a deliverance 

 from Hades of the departed, has been dedicated, through- 

 out the Old and New Worlds, to the worship of the manes 

 of ancestors. This festival survives in our All Saints 

 Day the accompanying feasts of Hallow-e'en and All 

 Souls, originating in the imperfection of ancient observa- 

 tions. Wanting instruments of sufficient accuracy to de- 

 termine the exact time of culmination, the ancients, by- 

 extending their devotions over three days, secured a due 

 celebration of the sacred epoch. One act of this solemn 

 period was lighting the sacred fire. The Times of 

 November 4 records that Her Majesty was graciously 

 pleased to assist at that holy rite, and witnessed the 

 burning in effigy of a witch, personification of the evil 

 power. This fire, the Bealltainn or Beltin, was the [fire 

 of Bel, and celebrated his ascension to the zenith, 

 whilst his adversary, the dragon, was cast down to the 

 nadir. In the rising of the Pleiades, at the time 

 that Scorpio sank below the horizon, we may see 

 the victory of Bel over the Dragon — a victory always 

 negatived, as autumn gave place to winter, and ever 

 renewed as winter was succeeded by spring, the alter- 

 nating success of the combatants being fitly recorded in 

 a joint worship. When we remember the identification 

 of the Cherubim with the Bull, and of the Seraph with 

 Scorpio, we perceive that their continual cry is but 

 another expression of the eternal struggle. Again, in 

 a mystic sense, we must remember that in Babylonian 

 mythology Bel was Saturn, the oldest and chief god, the 

 great spirit of antiquity, the ancient of days, God of 

 Heaven, Life God, Lord of the Cycles, Chronos, Eternal 

 God. His emanation was light, and in his character of 

 sun god he was the creator — Demiurgus and Logos — and 

 in this phase he combats and overcomes Tiamat or evil 

 chaos, as the heavenly spirit in Genesis broods over the 

 abyss of darkness — this idea is reproduced in another 

 Babylonian legend, in which Bel cuts the womrn Omorka, 

 or primitive matter, in halves, and forms heaven and 

 earth of the pieces. We can readily understand that on 

 the promulgation of the doctrine that the gods were 

 originally men whose virtue had raised them to the skies, 

 the heroic deeds of Bel were related as those of a giant 

 over natural foes, and that the first of the gods became 

 the first man, equivalent to Adam. And so we find that, 

 in company with his wife Beltis (Eve), he preceded the 

 antediluvian rule of the ten zodiac gods. But Bel was, 

 as the highest abstraction of deity, himself hermaphrodite, 



and in that sense active heaven and passive earth — light 

 and darkness. He is thus the dragon-slayer and the 

 great serpent itself, a fact which will account for the two 

 personifications being the objects of a joint worship 

 equivalent to the linga-yoni worship of India. 



To the getting up of the work we have nothing to object 

 except as regards the illustrations, which, though fair, 

 scarcely reach that standard which the excellence of the 

 text deserves. Debited, however, with any faults which it 

 may contain, a large balance remains to the credit of its 

 learned author, and if he has not succeeded in producing 

 an exhaustive treatise upon his subject, his volumes are 

 undoubtedly a most valuable contribution to Demonology, 

 and we trust they may meet with the success to which 

 they are unquestionably entitled. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Fauna dcr Gaskohle uud dcr Kalkstcinc der Permforma- 

 tion Bohmens. Von Dr. Ant. Fritsch, Band i. Heft i. 

 (Prague, 1S79.) 



The accomplished professor of zoology, in the univer- 

 sity of Prague, publishes in this part, which consists of 

 ninety-two folio pages and twelve beautiful plates, descrip- 

 tions of the sections of the rocks whence the fossils were 

 derived, lists of the fossils, and a careful n'siiun' of the 

 literature of the extinct amphibia, which are usually 

 j'imbled up together under the term Labyrinthodontia. 

 The most valuable part of the work is an elaborate 

 description of the new forms which abound in the strata 

 overlying the Silurians, in a region where the Pilsner 

 district may be considered typical. The Gaskohle there 

 yielded a very rich fauna and flora of twenty-one new 

 labyrinthodont species, some Orthacanthoids and species 

 of Xenacanthus, Acanthodes, and Palasoniscus ; besides 

 Estheria, portions of Orthoptera and Julus. The plants 

 named by 0. Feistmantel were numerous and the few typical 

 Permian forms are : — Equiseiites contractus, Neuropleris 

 imbricata, Odontoptcris obtusi/oba, and Schlotheimi, As- 

 terocaipus Geinitzii, Scliiitzia anomala, and IValchia 

 piniformis. With these are Sigillarin, Stigmaria, Volk- 

 mannia, Calamites, Lepidodendra, &c. The new am- 

 phiban genus Branchiosaurus is represented by five 

 species in the whole district, Sparodus by two, Hylo- 

 nomus by the same number, and there is a form called 

 Dawsonia. In noticing the family Branchiosauridae Dr. 

 Fritsch draws attention to the necessity of allowing 

 the name Stegocephali to replace that of the Laby- 

 rinthodontia for the order, as the labyrinthic con- 

 dition of the teeth is not seen in skulls in which the 

 supra-occipitals are two distinct ossifications, where 

 there are post-orbital and supra-temporal bones, as 

 well as well-developed epiotics, a sclerotic ring being 

 present. The family just alluded to are broad-headed 

 salamander-looking things with smooth teeth with large 

 cavities. They have short ribs, vertebrae with relics of 

 the chorda, and the parasphenoid is in the shape of a broad 

 plate, which narrows in front. The skin is covered with 

 delicate ornamented scales, and the remains of branchial 

 rays are present. One of these, Branchiosaurus said- 

 mandroides, already described by the author, is carefully 

 illustrated, and is a form well worth studying. Its 

 osteology is plainly given, and the remnants of the breast 

 plate and of the shoulder girdle and pelvis also. The 

 new genus Sparodus has remarkably broad bones, which 

 may be vomers, which carry numerous conical teeth, and 

 the fore part of the parasphenoid is short and broad, and 

 the palatines have a row of teeth on them. Allied to 

 Hylerpeton, Owen, and Batrachiderpeton, Hancock, 

 Sparodus has about seventeen teeth in the lower jaw 



