387 



high antiquity* in Chaldea and China, they 

 could not exactly mark the moment of midnight. 

 Besides, the cosmical setting of the Pleiades was 

 also considered, throughout the whole of Asia, as 

 an indication of the beginning of winter*^. We 

 should look in vain for rigorous exactness in po- 

 pular traditions, which perhaps took rise in 

 much more northerly regions, where the cold is 

 felt a month before the solstice. 



What we have just said relative to the con- 

 stellation of the Pleiades is also sufficient, to 

 prove how far mistaken are some authors, who 

 seem uncertain whether the year began toward 

 the vernal equinox, or toward the winter solstice. 

 The farther we remove from the 5th of Novem- 

 ber, the day of the achronical rising of the 

 Pleiades, the less possible would it be, that at 

 midnight, when this secular sacrifice was cele- 

 brated, the Mexicans should have seen this con- 

 stellation near the zenith J. Nevertheless, Tor- 

 quemada, Leon, and Betancourt, believed, that 

 the year began the 1st or 2d of February; Acosta 

 and Clavigero, the 26th of the same month ; 

 Valades and Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the 1st and 20th 

 of March ; Gemelli and Veytia, the 10th of 



* Sext. Empir. pag. StephanV 113. Lettre du pare Da 

 Croz, in Souciet, Observat., Tom. 1, p, 345. 



f Bailly, Astr. mod., p. 477. 

 X Gama, § 35, p. 52, note. 



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