is this; that the order of the signs in the two zodiacs is contrariwise. In the Egyptian zodiac, which is painted or engraved upon the ceiling of a chamber, that is, in the position in which a spectator would view the concave vault of the heavens, the order is from right to left, agreeing with the apparent motion of the sun from east to west but in the Vatican zodiac, which is carved upon a convex globe, and so comes under the eye instead of over it, the order is reversed, or from left to right; just as if one were first to look into the crown of a hat, and then turn it and look down upon its crown, it would be found that that which was on the right hand of its center before, would now be on the left.

Gemini. In proceeding still to the westward, according to the apparent course of the sun, the next portion of the globe is the continent of America, which indeed came partly under consideration, in treating of the last sign Taurus, when the great gulf of the West-Indies was mentioned, and which being separated into two great divisions, North and South, has caused the next sign to be represented by two figures, called Gemini, the Twins. I am aware that this supposition, in either case, carries back the discovery of America to an æra antecedent to the invention of the zodiac ; and who shall presume to state the æra at which that dis

covery was really made? The oldest books we have, the sacred Scriptures and Homer, are full of evident proofs of its being most accurately known in those times but as the reader (without investigation probably) may have given credit to the beautiful fable of Columbus's expedition as a reality, it may be expedient to devote a few short sentences to the examination of that fable. To believe that the Greeks and Romans (whether they were in truth the nations they are commonly supposed to have been, or merely fabulous types of other nations, the more natural depositories of wealth, of power, and of science,) attained to the perfection for which they are celebrated in all the elegant arts of poetry, painting, statuary, and architecture; and at the same time to have had the very limited knowledge we impute to them, of the globe they inhabited, is it not to believe and to presume that which is contrary to the course of nature and to the common order of things? Is not such a supposition totally irreconcileable with the habits of two nations so curious and inquisitive, as the Greeks and Romans are said to have been? Is there any thing in which the appetite so much increases by being gratified, as in matters of discovery by land and sea? and does not the common story of Alexander's weeping that he had no more worlds to conquer, necessarily imply that he had

a full knowledge of that in which he lived? It is admitted that the Romans were acquainted with India, and that Alexander himself penetrated there. Could those who had a knowledge of India have remained for any long time ignorant of China? and must not a knowledge of China have led to that of Tartary; and of Tartary (in process of time) to that of America; it being recollected that the Chinese, if not the Tartars, have been in all ages remarkably addicted to navigation? Such, I apprehend, was indeed the true path of discovery on the Asiatic side of the globe (but it was different undoubtedly on the European side, though by no means such as is commonly understood), and the name alone of Columbus is a record of it; for Columbus, a dove, is a synonyme of Turtur, a dove, by which symbol, Tartary, from their resemblance in name, was by the ancients enigmatically designated. By a like interpretation the name of Pizarro, one of the first conquerors in America, will be found to be only the same as Serapis, reversed; and I have somewhere met with an engraving, of either a gem or a statue, inscribed o Zɛus Zɛgamis, in which North America was pourtrayed under a human figure sitting, with the threeheaded dog Cerberus, answering to South America, at his feet. So again Montezuma, supposed to be one of the great American heroes, I take to be no

other than an index, pointing by his name, monte summo, to the vast height of the Andes mountains. And thus again, the term Amazon I take to be compounded of alpha and μαζος or μαζον a breast, and to be the poetic or enigmatical name of the river Maranon, which having its chief course nearly parallel to the equator or first parallel of latitude from which all the others are reckoned, is referred to by the alpha or first letter; and as it runs round a district situate to the north of its mouth, which has a most striking resemblance to a female breast, that circumstance is denoted accordingly by the latter part of that name. And it is for the reader to pronounce whether the seated figure of the hieroglyphic groupe in Pl. IV., inserted in the sixth vol. post, as having the alpha inscribed over her head and all over her robe; as distinguished by a single female breast; as having a line or rod, a symbol of the equatorial line, in her hand; as having the foot of her throne inscribed by nine crosses, (or tens,) within circles, marking thereby ninety degrees or one quarter of the globe; and as having, in two several places, smoking-pipes, as indices, perhaps, from whence tobacco first came; is not likely to have been intended to represent America; while the other human figure, holding to the former a bird like a turtle dove, or turtur, standing over a vessel which has the shape of the country of China, and is in

scribed with marks as of bricks, pointing perhaps to the famous wall of China, from which limit Tartary begins, is not a like simple indication of this last country Tartary; and if the reader should be struck with the resemblance between this groupe in plate IV., and that of fig. 149, ante, which was intended to give a general idea of the groupe formed by the shadows of the moon, as viewed with the naked eye; I am, for my own part, not disinclined to believe that such a similitude between the former and the appearances in the moon might have been intended, in order thereby to intimate that the course of the tides, which are so closely connected with the changes of the moon, was the true cause of the discovery of America on the European side. But however that may be, and at whatever period the old and new continents, as they are called, became known to each other; as they were separated from each other by a considerable tract of sea, it must at first have been considered as a discovery; and that it was made by the old continent is next to a certainty, from the immemorially abject state of the human species (which must necessarily, therefore, have been incurious and unenterprizing) in every part of the new continent. The latter, therefore, as between the two, would naturally acquire that name of the new continent, and as it is separated into two great portions, both which