NOTES. 



239 



Ptolemies, in order to explain why Achilles Tatius 

 speaks of the moans of the Egyptians at the festival 

 of Isis, as a custom immutably connected with the 

 period of the winter solstice. If moreover among the 

 Mexicans we find no renewal of this apprehension 

 of the approaching disappearance of the Sun till after 

 fifty- two vague years, we may no doubt attribute it to 

 the importance which every nation attaches to the end 

 of a great cycle. We observe even at the present 

 time, that the last day of the year bears with it an air 

 of solemnity among nations very remote from supersti- 

 tious ideas (Oeuvres de Boullanger, 1794, torn. 2. 

 p. 61). 



In Mexico, as well as at Thebes, the Sun is still con- 

 siderably elevated at the period when its south declina- 

 tion begins to diminish ; and we might say, that the 

 fear of the total disappearance of this luminary ought 

 rather to be excited in those regions of Asia, where 

 Mr. Bailly places the origin of astronomy, than among 

 the nations near the tropic. Nevertheless, it may be 

 conceived how, in a worship, the symbols of which 

 related to the state of the heavens, ideas of a pro- 

 gressive lowering of the Sun, and the shortening the 

 duration of the days, however little apparent these 

 phenomena may be, lead to lugubrious ceremonies, to 

 the expressions of sorrow and of fear. 



As to the asterism, to which different nations have 

 assigned, at different periods, the first place in the 

 zodiac, this is one of the most interesting investiga- 

 tions in the history of astronomy. As years begin 

 either by the solstices or by the equinoxes, the order 

 of the signs, or rather the preference given to one of 

 them which opens the march of the asterisms, fixes the 

 date of the origin of the zodiac. Under this point of 



