﻿404 Canadian Record of Science. 



rather than a scientific qualification ; and yet when 

 among the records of classical times we come upon traces 

 of manners and customs which have survived for 

 generations, and which seem to throw some rays of light 

 upon the dim past, when history and writing were 

 unknown, we are, I think, approaching the boundaries of 

 scientific Archaeology. 



Every reader of Virgil knows that the Greeks were not 

 merely orators, but that with a pair of compasses they 

 could describe the movements of the heavens and fix the- 

 rising of the stars ; but when by modern Astronomy 

 we can determine the heliacal rising of some well-known 

 star, with which the worship in some given ancient temple 

 is known to have been connected, and can fix its position 

 on the horizon at some particular spot, say, 3,000 years- 

 ago, and then find that the axis of the temple is directed 

 exactly towards that spot, we have some trustworthy 

 scientific evidence that the temple in question must have 

 been erected at a date approximately 1,100 years B.C. 

 If on or close to the same site we find that more than one 

 temple was erected, ear3h having a different orientation, 

 these variations, following as they may fairly be presumed 

 to do the changing position of the rising of the dominant 

 star, will also afford a guide as to the chronological order 

 of the different foundations. The researches of Mr. 

 Penrose seem to show that in certain Greek temples, 

 of which the date of foundation is known from history, 

 the actual orientation corresponds with that theoretically 

 deduced from astronomical data. 



Sir J. Norman Lockyer has shown that what holds good 

 for Greek temples applies to many of far earlier date 

 in Egypt, though up to the present time hardly a sufficient 

 number of accurate observations have been made to- 

 justify us in foreseeing all the instructive results that 

 may be expected to arise from Astronomy coming to the 

 aid of Archaeology. 



