i 9 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



FABULOUS ASTRONOMY.* 



By Peof. J. C. HOUZEAU. 



THE darkness of the night exercised a sort of terror upon the 

 minds of our ancestors. Just as material existence was sup- 

 posed to succeed to nothing, and to he followed hy it, day succeeds 

 night, and this, they said, is the origin of time, as the winter is of 

 the year. The Ostiaks of the Yenisei count their years by the 

 snows, as also, or by winters, did the Iroquois of North America. 

 The Numidians, Caesar's Gauls, and the Germans of Tacitus, esti- 

 mated daily periods by the nights. The night had a considerable 

 importance in 'the North ; and the Scandinavians had the most 

 coherent and most poetical ideas of it. Day was the son of Night. 

 The latter went first, a passage in the Edda says, mounted on her 

 horse Rinf ax, of the icy mane. Every morning, at the conclusion 

 of his race, the courser watered the earth with the foam that fell 

 from his bridle; this was the dew. Day followed, mounted on 

 Sinfax, of the glowing mane, which lightened up the air and the 

 earth. These people also believed that the longest night, that of 

 the winter solstice, begat all the others, and that the world was 

 created on such a night. Therefore night was called mother. 

 Midwinter-night, or Yule, was the great annual festival, and 

 marked the beginning of the new year. The Chaldeans said that 

 the world began at the autumnal equinox, when the night be- 

 came longer than the day. The French courts in the seven- 

 teenth century still ordered clients to appear within fourteen 

 nights. The English fortnight is a contraction of this term. 



The ancient Peruvians said that the moon was dead during the 

 three days that it is invisible. The Khasias, of northeastern In- 

 dia, thought that the sun burned it up. Some savage tribes be- 

 lieve that the lunation is a quarrel between the sun and moon as 

 husband and wife, identically repeated in every month. The in- 

 creasing moon represents its gaining the ascendency, the decrease 

 its yielding, till at last the sun swallows it and spits its head out 

 in the sky. The ancient Slavs imagined that the moon was 

 condemned to wander, for infidelity with the morning star. The 

 Dakota Indians fancied that the declining moon was eaten by 

 mice; the Polynesians, by spirits of the dead. The Hottentots 

 said that, suffering from headache, it covered its face with its 

 hand ; the Eskimos, that, becoming tired and hungry, it retired to 

 rest and eat, after which it recuperated very fast. 



There is probably no country where some kind of a picture has 

 not been made out of the visible spots on the moon. Two types 



* From the " Bibliographie generate de l'Astronomie," by MM. Houzeau and Lancaster. 



