Fig. 150.

Taurus. As the sun travels apparently from the east to the west, the groupe of stars which marks his next position as a sign in the heavens, should of course correspond with a portion of the globe situate to the westward of that to which the sign of Aries has been referred. The second sign is Taurus, the Bull; which as seen in the zodiac in the frontispiece of this volume, may be considered as looking downwards rather than backwards (owing, I imagine, to an error in the original draftsman or engraver ;) but in the zodiac engraved among the plates that accompany Denon's Travels in Egypt (pl. 130) the Bull is drawn looking backwards, as clearly and plainly as the Ram in the first sign: and if the reader will turn the map of the globe upside down, or with the

north downwards, and so view it backwards, he will perceive the resemblance of the forepart of a bull (as in the zodiac of the frontispiece) composed of the Atlantic Ocean, together with the great gulf of the West Indies and Baffin's Bay. The head of the Bull will be in the center of the Atlantic, with the face in the West Indian Gulf; the nose will be in the Gulf of Mexico; the eye, in the path of the sun, in the Tropic of Cancer; the left horn formed by South America, and the right by the continent of Africa; while its two fore-legs extend into Hudson's and Baffin's Bay, and the body into the Icy Sea by way of Spitzbergen; resembling in its entirety, Fig 151.

In the Egyptian zodiac the Bull is drawn running at full speed, which may arise from the portion of the globe which this sign represents, being composed of water or the sea.

It may be here necessary, perhaps, to premise the following remarks: first, that this short treatise, being intended, as above mentioned, merely to give an explanation of a few symbols which are undoubtedly hieroglyphics, comprizes only an extract from a larger, which draws a comparison between the Vatican zodiac and the Egyptian zodiac (both above referred to), not solely in respect of the twelve signs, but of most of the other constellations included in them, and though for such a purpose, it would have been more in order to have put the Egyptian zodiac at the head of this volume, as being more decidedly hieroglyphic, rather than the Vatican zodiac, yet, from the former having some even of the twelve signs (not to speak here of other constellations) different from those in the modern zodiacs (those, for example, of Virgo and Aquarius), I have gone somewhat out of my course, and adopted the latter on the present occasion, since those differences from the Egyptian zodiac (while the other signs and constellations remain the same) do not make the symbols of the Vatican zodiac less hieroglyphic in their nature. Another observation which it is essential to make

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

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