MYRIOGENESES. (Vol. XI, p. 92.) This word myriogeneses means "many births," governed by all degrees; the personifications of the influences of each individual degree. Scaliger gives the ascendants in each sign as represented by the Arabian astrologers, as they pretended to have received them from the Egyptians. Those of the first Decanus in Aries will suffice, by the real mediæval nature of the representations themselves, to demonstrate the doubtfulness of their pretended designs, and the more recent origin of such figures. Aries, the first Decanus Asiccan of Mars, gives courage and forwardness, which sometimes is little short of impudence.

I. Man holding in his right hand a pruning-hook, in his left a cross bow.

2. Dog-headed man, with right hand extended, a wand in his left. 3. Man holding out various ornaments in the right hand, his left placed in his girdle.

4. Man with curly hair, in his right hand a hawk, in his left a whip. 5. Two men, one cleaving wood with an axe, the other holding a sceptre.

6. A king crowned, in his right hand the orb, in his left the sceptre. Man in armour holding an arrow.

Man with a helmet, in his right hand a cross bow.

7.

8.

Man bareheaded, a sword in his left.

All these types were expressive of corresponding inclinations and qualities in the native under each degree. But Scalager explains, and very plausible, many of the compound figures holding zodiacal signs in their hands, and usually classed among the gnostical, as genuine representations of the myroigeneses.

One decan, or ten degrees being one-third of a sign, is also called an abraxoid.

LOST SIGN OF THE ZODIAC. (Vol. XI, p. 95.) In regard to the "lost sign of the zodiac," probably Robert Brown's exposition is the best summary at hand. It was at a remote antiquity known as Tulku the Sacred Mound, and represented by the conical block there. The form of the abbreviation now called Libra ( ) denoted that symbol. The sign or symbol probably lost its position as Babylon lost her existence, as one of the results of conquest. Balance, was introduced to take its place.

Libra, or the

A. WILDER.

CRISPUS ATTUCKS. (Vol. XI, p. 91.) Crispus Attucks was the first man killed at the " Boston Massacre," of March 5, 1770. He was a colored man, and had made himself marked as the leader of a conflict with a party of British soldiers at Murray's Barracks in Brattle Street. An hour later the quarrel was taken up anew in King street, near the Custom House; the crowd attacking a file of soldiers with snow-balls, oaths, and foul language. Henry Knox, afterwards Secretary of War, Samuel Gray, and others attempted to prevent a riot, when seven of the men one by one, discharged his musket with deadly aim. Attucks was leaning upon a large billet of wood watching the affair, when a bullet hit him, killing him on the spot. Gray next fell; then Patrick Carr who was crossing the street; then James Caldwell, and finally Samuel Maverick, a boy of seventeen, who was running out to a fire a few streets away. The troops were speedily sent out of Boston, and the American Revolution postponed five years. A. WILDER.

"CHILDREN OF THE SUN." (Vol. XI, p. 91.) "Children of the Sun" is a phrase that has been employed at various times, and in different regions. The Yncas of Peru professed to be of solar descent and established a worship very analogous in rites and practices to solar cults in others countries. Samas the sun-god of Assyria was probably the tutelary of the Semitic peoples. Marduk, or AmarUtuki the Akkado-Chaldean divinity, was a personification of the sun. The Rajputs of India are also called children of the sun, and they venerate Rama as the chief of the solar race in India. After the Aryan colonists became permanent in India, the sun-dynasty made its principal capital at Ayodhya (Oude), and some centuries later a second invasion established the Mcon-race at Hastirapura, or Dehli.

A. WILDER.

CANTAB. (Vol. XI, p. 95.) Cantab is an abbreviation of the word Cantabrigian, a student or alumnus of the University of Cambridge, England. A. WILDER.

FIRST AMERICAN NOVEL. (Vol. XI, p. 91.) I think that the first work regarded as an American novel, was'" The Algerine Captive," published nearly a century ago.

A. WILDER.

ALMANAC AND CALENDAR. (Vol. XI, p. 91.)

Calendar has relation to the calling of the month; and the noting of days in an account book for the collecting of interest and rents. Almanack is apparently Arabic and was used in connection with the casting of horoscopes, etc. In common usage there is not now much difference in

the sense of the words.

A. WILDER.

BAVARIA AND SAMARIA. (Vol. XI, p. 92.) The analogy between the names Bavaria and Samaria is only a seeming one. The former forms its adjective and other derivatives after the style of the Latin language; the latter by the Greek and Semitic. A. WILDER.

The Sibyls and Sirens were
We find the Sibyls first

SIRYLS AND SIRENS. (Vol. XI, p. 92.) beings of different natures and offices. named by Plato in the Phædrus, as employing prophetic inspiration and predicting future events. The term is from the Doric Sio-bolla, for Theo Boule, and means the publisher of the divine caused. first but one, the Cumæan, seems to have been rocognized.

At

In regard to Sirens, I am disposed to favor Jacob Bryant's explanation that they were priestesses or magdalens at the temples, who charmed and attracted strangers by their songs and fascinations to come to their temples, there to be slain as sacrifices. term Siruth means 66

women who sing."

The Hebrew A. WILDER.

The inquiry made re(Robert Brown, Jr., of

THE CREATION LEGEND. (Vol. XI, p. 95.) specting my worthy correspondent's quotation Barton-on-Humber, England), I would suggest that the question be sent to him directly. He would be sure to answer it. By reference to "The Chaldean Account of Genesis," translated from the Assyrian Tablets by the late George Smith, page 64, the quotation will be found: "He arranged the year according to the bounds that he defined," meaning the twelve signs of the zodiac. The book can be obtained from Scribner, New York. A. WILDER.

POPES NAMED ALEXANDER. (Vol. XI, p. 91.) There were six pope Alexanders in the roll. The last of the number, Roderigo Borgia attached such a fragrance to the name that no pontiff seems have cared to adopt it as his titular designation. A. WILDER.

LAW OF LEAST EFFORT.

(Vol. XI, p. 95.) The phrase, "law of least effort," is applied by Mr. Brown to the principle of abbreviation, by which part of a word, or idea-symbol, is written to express the whole; or as a numerical figure is used in preference to writing out the whole amount in words. The law is simply that of doing as little as possible to accomplish a desired purpose, avoiding any superfluous waste of energy. A. WILDER. SEA-GIRT LAND. A recent issue of a newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, published in California, speaks of that state as a sea-girt, sunkissed state." Now, can the compound "sea girt" be properly ap

66

plied to that state? C. B. S. Webster defines sea-girt as "surrounded by the water of the sea or ocean," as a sea-girt isle, referring to Milton.

Buckley's prose translation of the Odyssey (1, p. 3, Bohn's edition), says, (the blue-eyed goddess Minerva speaking):

"But my heart burns for the prudent ill-fated Ulysses, who, away from his friends a long time, is suffering calamities in a sea girt island, where is the center of the sea, a woody island, and in her mansion a goddess dwells, the daughter of all-wise Atlas."

In John Pierpont's poem, "Napoleon at Rest," we have the lines:

"Behind this sea-girt rock, the star,

That led him on from crown to crown.
Has sunk; and nations from afar
Gazed as it faded and went down."

PSYCHOLOGY, MESMERISM, HYPNOTISM, ETC. (Vol. XI, p. 92.) As words are used, or rather misused, psychology is the science of alienism; but a bastard verb "psychologize" has been coined to express an occult psychic influence akin to mesmerizing. In court speech, psychology is the science of the soul and its qualities; mesmerism is the art of inducing trance, sleep, and cessation of pain, promulgated by Anton Mesmer ; animal magnetism denotes the same art; hypnotism was invented by Braid and is applied inacurately to the art or condition, on purpose to evade giving credit where it is due, and to make the art "scientific " or orthodox, this last term should not be

used.

A. WILDER.

SEVEN-HILLED CITY. Urbs Septicollis. Ancient Rome built on seven hills surrounded by fortifications: 1. The Palatine; 2. the Capitolinus; 3. the Quirinalis; 4. the Cælius; 5. the Aventinus; 7. the Viminalis; 7. the Esquilinus.

"READ HOMER ONCE, AND YOU WILL READ NO MORE." (Vol. II, P. 352.) "OMERUS," in April, 1884, asks for the name of the poem, from which was taken the lines which characterize an ardent admirer of the Homeric epics. I do not recall that his question has been answered, and therefore will say the four lines are found in the poem an Essay on Poetry," by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721). It is written in the heroic couplet, and seems to have suggested Pope's "Essay on Criticism."

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"Read Homer once, and you can read no more,
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the book you need."

M.

-Sheffield's Essay on Poetry.

"Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring."

-Pope's Essay on Criticism.

"And when I die, be sure you let me know
Great Homer died three thousand years ago;
Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipped me in ink, my parents' or my own?"

-Pope's Prologue to the Satires.

"Homer is gone, and where is Jove?
And where the rival cities seven ?

His song outlives time, tower, and god,

All that then was, save Heaven."-Bailey's Festus.

PRESIDENTIAL HISTORICAL COINCIDENCES. John Adams was 8 years older than his successor, Thomas Jefferson, he 8 years older than James Madison, he eight years older than James Monroe, and he 8 years older than John Quincy Adams. George Washington ended his presidential term in the 66th year of his age, and so did John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day, July 4th, 1826, just 50 years from the Declaration of Independence. James Monroe died July 4, 1831. It is said that all the presidents had blue eyes except William Henry Harrison.