contemplated with respect the unfortunate object of modern derision. [1] Sir Isaac Newton has the following remarks in regard to the origin of Astrology:—“After the study of Astronomy was set on foot for the use of navigation, and the Ægyptians, by the heliacal risings and settings of the stars, had determined the length of the solar year of 365 days, and by other observations had fixed the solstices, and formed the fixed stars into asterisms, all which was done in the reigns of Ammon, Sesac, Orus, and Memnon,” (about 1000 years before Christ), “it may be presumed that they continued to observe the motions of the planets, for they called them after the names of their gods; and Nechepsos, or Nicepsos, King of Sais,” (772 B.C.), “by the assistance of Petosiris, a priest of Ægypt, invented astrology, grounding it upon the aspects of the planets, and the qualities of the men and women to whom they were dedicated;† and in the beginning of the reign of Nabonassar, King of Babylon, about which time the Æthiopians, under Sabacon, invaded Ægypt” (751 B.C.), “those Ægyptians who fled from him to Babylon, carried thither the Ægyptian year of 365 days, and the study of astronomy and astrology, and founded the æra of Nabonassar, dating it from the first year of that king’s reign” (747 B.C.), “and beginning the year on the same day with the Ægyptians for the sake of their calculations. So Diodorus: ‘_they say that the Chaldæan in Babylon, being colonies of the Ægyptians, became famous for astrology, having learned it from the priests of Ægypt_.’”—Newton’s Chronology, pp. 251, 252. Again, in p. 327: “The practice of observing the stars began in Ægypt in the days of Ammon, as above, and was propagated from thence, in the reign of his son Sesac, into Afric, Europe, and Asia, by conquest; and then Atlas formed the sphere of the Libyans” (956 B.C.), “and Chiron that of the Greeks (939 B.C.); and the Chaldæans also made a sphere of their own. But astrology was invented in Ægypt by Nichepsos, or Necepsos, one of the Kings of the Lower Ægypt, and Petosiris his priest, a little before the days of Sabacon, and propagated thence into Chaldæa, where Zoroaster, the legislator of the Magi, met with it: so Paulinus; ‘_Quique magos docuit mysteria vana Necepsos._’”