Ancient Calendars , and Constellations. By the Hon. Emmeline M. Plunket.
(John Murray. 9s. net.)—Miss Plunket's calcula- tions are too complicated to be put in a compendious form before our readers. Her first paper deals with the Accadian Calendar, which, it is now tolerably certain, must be referred to a very remote antiquity; not less than 6000 B.C. It is connected, of course, with the Zodiac, a phenomenon which has a very remark- able place in the history of human thought. To modern man, surrounded as he is with the results of millenniums of invention, the heavens, a few striking of excepted, are a 11111243 without a plan. His remote ancestors, without any of these helps, observed
them with a keenness of which we can have no conception. Miss Plunket's second paper is given to the " Constellation Aries." Aries is not a striking object, and a difficult problem is suggested by the question: Why should a star group so inconspicuous have been made so important? Other papers are devoted to the astronomy of the Medes, of the Rig Veda and India generally, and of China. The volume is full of curious learping, which the reader interested in such subjects may well findlit worth his while to examine.
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