CONSTELLATIONS. DURATIONS. Years. Aries, 1747 Taurus, 1826 Gemini, 1636 Cancer, 1204 Leo, 2617 Virgo, 3307 The Talons, 1089[219] Scorpio, 1823 Sagittarius, 2138 Capricorn, 1416 Aquarius, 1196 Pisces, 2936 “As to the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians, there is no want of reveries among them. One can absolutely make nothing of them. My opinion with regard to them may be seen in the preliminary discourse of my History of the Astronomy of the Middle Age, p. xvii and xviii. See also the note affixed to the Report on the Memoirs of M. de Paravey, vol. viii. of the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, and republished by M. de Paravey in his Summary of his Memoirs upon the Origin of the Sphere, p. 24, 31-36. See further the Analysis of the Mathematical Labours of the Academy in 1820, p. 78 and 79. “DELAMBRE.” * * * * * It would still have to be ascertained at what period the observers ceased to place the constellation in which the sun entered after the solstice, at the head of the descending signs, and whether this was done as soon as the solstice had retrograded sufficiently to touch the preceding constellation. Thus MM. Jollois and Devilliers,--to whose unremitting zeal we are indebted for an accurate knowledge of these famous monuments, always considering the division towards the entrance of the porch as the solstice, and judging that the Virgin must have been regarded as the first of the descending constellations, insomuch as the solstice had not receded at least so far as the middle of the constellation of the Lion; and, believing that they saw farther, as we have mentioned, that the Lion is divided in the great zodiac of Esne, have not given to that zodiac a more remote antiquity than 2160 years before Christ.[220] Mr Hamilton, who was the first that observed this division of the sign of the Lion, in the zodiac of Esne, reduced the distance of the period at which the solstice occurred there, to 1400 years before Christ. A great many other opinions have appeared on the same subject. M. Rhode, for example, has proposed two. The first refers the zodiac of the portico of Dendera to a period of 591 years before Christ; the second, to 1290[221]. M. Latreille has fixed the period of this zodiac at 670 years before Christ; that of the planisphere at 550; that of the zodiac of the great temple of Esne at 2550; and that of the small one at 1760.