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observed; and, by making a necessary allowance for the diffe- 
rence between the state of agriculture in those primitive times 
and the present, and between the productiveness of the climate 
in Upper and Lower Egypt, he proceeds to account for the 
difference of about 14 days, by which the ancients and 
moderns appear to have disagreed in the time of keeping 
harvest, as determined from the vernal equinox, which it has 
preceded about 24 days in all ages. 
In confirmation of his views on this subject, the author 
refers to two Egyptian memorials, one of which is contained 
in the ancient hieroglyphic ritual, and the other in the circular 
zodiac of Tentera, which is at present in Paris. From the 
one he deduces an evidence that the division of the quadri- 
ennium, by the entrance of the sun into one of the tropes, was 
recognised by the ancient Egyptians, the diurnal and nocturnal 
ingress being expressed by a significant hieroglyphic. From 
the other he shows that the remarkable epochs when the great 
festival of Isis, in the retrogression of the great canicular year, 
coincided with those points of the horizon from whence the 
seasons take their beginning, were no less plainly expressed 
and happily indicated. 
In proceeding from the consideration of the Egyptians to 
that of the Greeks, the author commences by observing the 
differences which arose from the substitution of lunar cycles 
for solar in the equating of the civil year to the latter. After 
premising that the reconciliation of those differences is to be 
sought at the close and commencement of the cycles, where 
the equation to solar time was applied, he proceeds to show 
that at these points they give sufficient indication of haying 
been formed or deduced from years which preserved the original 
intercalation. He exemplifies this assumption in the ancient 
tetraeteris which had preceded the lunar cycles in Greece, and 
he establishes it from that of Solon and Cleostratus, which 
began on February 18 ; and was thus equated in the proper 
year and month, and within a few days of the original and 
