Facts from the Arcana of Nature. 93 



which they then corresponded. The vernal equinox now 

 happens when the sun is in Pisces ; the summer solstice 

 when he is in Gemini ; the autumnal equinox when he is in 

 Virgo ; and the winter solstice when he is in Sagittarius. 

 Astronomers, however, still employ the term, the first point of 

 Aries, to denote the position of the vernal equinox." 



This change in the apparent position of stars is astronomi- 

 cally termed, the uniform increase of longitude, by Sir John 

 Herschel, " That is, the apparent approach of some stars and 

 constellations to the pole or vanishing point of the Earth's 

 axis, and recession of others." Thus, by the fiction of regard- 

 ing the sun and stars as movable, with reference to stated 

 points on our sphere, instead of such motion being confined 

 to the Earth itself, and thus made apparent to man — as pas- 

 sengers in a coach see distant objects apparently passing their 

 limits of observation — have astronomers been led to overlook 

 the palpable proofs available of the continuous deviation ter- 

 restrially, of the poles of the Earth's axis of rotation, and 

 consequently, to build up a series of fallacious theories to 

 account for movements, referred to a revolution of the celes- 

 tial sphere, -mich are simply terrestrial, apparently ever 

 progressing since the beginning of our globe's history, and 

 the inevitable and natural result of the operation of natural 

 laws. 



M. Adhemar (a French mathematician of eminence), author 

 of Revolutions cle la Mer, Deluges periocliques, Paris, 1843, 

 accounts for the position assumed by the Earth upon the plane 

 of her orbit, as being the result of the accumulation of ice 

 alternately at either pole, depending upon the declension of 

 clima f e induced by the phenomena of the precession of the 

 equinoxes in either hemisphere alternately, during successive 

 epochs of the period assigned by astronomy to a revolution 

 of the ecliptic, or 25,868 years. According to his theory, the 

 Earth is now progressing towards a secular change of her 

 position upon the plane of her orbit, to be accomplished, with 

 all its contemporaneous phenomena of aqueous and igneous 

 convulsions, as soon as the period of 12,934 years — less the 

 time, some 4,200 years, now elapsed since the deluge of Noah 

 — completes one half of such revolution of the ecliptic. 

 Adhemar's theory, however, though suggestive of a cause, by 

 accumulation of polar ice, of change in the Earth's centre of 

 gravity, is faulty in that he assumes, that the time has not 

 yet arrived for a disproportionate arctic accumulation of ice, 

 and consequent gravitation of the watery envelope of the 



