After the forgoing brief investigation of the more limited as well as more extensive significations, regarding general events, it becomes proper to proceed to the doctrine of genethliacal prognostication, or judgments of individual nativities. [107] At this place, the following sentence, not found in the Greek, is inserted in a Latin translation: “If the northern of the two stars, situated one on each side of the Præsepe, and called the Asini, should not appear, the north wind will blow: but, if the southern one be invisible, the south wind.” [108] These coruscations are, perhaps, similar to those now known by the name of the Aurora Borealis. [109] Virgil again: “Sæpe etiam stellas vento impendente videbis Præcipites cœlo labi.”—&c. _Georg._ I, l. 365. A great part of the 1st Georgic consists of astrological rules for predicting the weather, closely resembling the precepts here given by Ptolemy. Virgil is said to have adopted his doctrine from Aratus. END OF BOOK II BOOK THE THIRD CHAPTER I PROEM In the preceding pages, such events as effect the world generally have been discussed in priority; because they are operated by certain principal and paramount causes, which are, at the same time, predominant over particular and minor events applicable only to the separate properties and natural peculiarities of individuals. The foreknowledge of these particular events is called Genethlialogy, or the science of Nativities. It must be remembered that the causation, by which all effects, whether general or particular, are produced and foreknown, is essentially one and the same; for the motions of the planets, and of the Sun and Moon, present the operative causation of events which happen to any individual, as well as of those which happen generally; and the foreknowledge of both may be obtained by the several creatures and substances, subjected to the influence of the heavenly bodies, and by due attention to the changes produced in those natures, by the configurations displayed in the Ambient by the planetary motion.