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-f-. 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 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 lOth of 
^ Sext. Emplr. pag. Sleplian. 113. Lettre du j>@re Du 
€;’oz, in Souciet, Observat., Tom. 1, p. 345,. 
t Bailly, Astr. mod., p. 477. 
J Gama, § 35, p. 52, note. 
c € 2 
