THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. ISl 



months twelve names, chosen from amongst those of their lunar 

 houses, for reasons now impossible to ascertain or account for * ? 



The absurdity of preserving for fifteen thousand years, in the con- 

 stellations, the figures and symbolic names which no longer bore any 

 relation to their respective situations, would have been much more 

 evident if it had been carried so far as to preserve to the months those 

 same names which M'ere incessantly in the mouths of the people, and 

 the irrelevancy of which would be perceptible at every instant. 



^¥hat then would become of all those other systems, if the figures 

 and names of the zodiacal constellations had been given to them, 

 without at all relating to tlie course of the sun, as their inequality, 

 the extent of many of them beyond the zodiac, and their manifest 

 connexion with neighbouring constellations, seem to demonstrate f ? 



"What would be the consequence, if, as Macrobius distinctly says +, 

 " each sign should be considered as an emblem of the sun, considered 

 in some one of his effects or general phenomena, and without any re- 

 ference to the months through which he passes, either into the sign or 

 into its opposite ?" 



Finally, how would it be if names had been given in an abstract man- 

 ner to the divisions of space or time, as they are now assigned by 

 astronomers to what they call the signs, and had not been applied to 

 the constellations or groups of stars but at an epoch determined by 

 chance, so tliat we could conclude nothing farther from their significa- 

 tion § ? 



Here are, doubtless, sufficient arguments to deter an ingenuous mind 

 from seeking into astronomy for proofs of the antiquity of nations ; 

 but, even if these pretended proofs were as certain as they are vague 

 and destitute of convincing results, what conclusion could we thence 

 draw against the great ctitastrophe of which we have so many other 

 indisputable demonstrations ? We can only allow that, as some mo- 

 dern writers have said, astronomy was amongst the sciences preserved 

 by those persons whom this catastrophe spared. 



* See Sir William Jones's Memoir on tlie Antiquity of tlie Indian Zodiac, Mem. de 

 Calcutta, vol. ii. 



f See the Zodiac explained, or Researclies on the Origin and Signification of the 

 Constellations of the Greek Sphere, translated from the Swedish by M. Swartz, 

 Paris, 1809. 



J Saturnal. 1. 1, c. 21, sub fin. Nee solus Leo, sed signa quoque universa Zodiaci 

 ad naturam solisjure referuntur, &c. It is only in this explanation of Leo and Ca- 

 pricornus that he has recourse to any phenomena relative to the seasons ; Cancer 

 even is explained under a general point of view, and with relation to the obliquity of 

 the progress of the sun. 



§ See M. de Guignes' Memoir on the Zodiacs of the Eastern Nations, Academic 

 des Belles Lettres, vol. xlvii. 



