In the high days of astrology when such an immediate influence was affirmed upon the then undisputed authority of St. Augustin, it was asked how it happened that the professors of this science so frequently deceived others, and were deceived themselves? The answer was that too often instead of confining themselves within the legitimate limits of the art, they enlarged their phylacteries too much. Farther, that there were many more fixed stars than were known to us, yet these also must have their influence; and moreover that the most learned professors differed upon some of the most important points. Nevertheless so many causes and effects in the course of nature were so visibly connected, that men, whether astrologers or not, drew from them their own conclusions, and presaged accordingly: _mirum non est, si his et similibus solerter pensiculatis, non tam astrologi quam philosophi, medici, et longâ experientiâ edocti agricolæ et nautæ, quotidie de futuris multa vera predicunt, etiam sine astrologiæ regulis de morbis, de annonâ, deque tempestatibus._ All persons in Peter Hopkins's days believed that change of weather may be looked for at the change of the Moon; and all men except a few philosophers believe so still, and all the philosophers in Europe could not persuade an old sailor out of the belief. And that the tides have as much influence over the human body in certain stages of disease, as the moon has over the tides, is a popular belief in many parts of the world. The Spaniards think that all who die of chronic diseases breathe their last during the ebb. Among the wonders of the Isle and City of Cadiz, which the historian of that city, Suares de Salazar, enumerates, one is, according to P. Labat, that the sick never die there while the tide is rising or at its height, but always during the ebb: he restricts the notion to the Isle of Leon, but implies that the effect was there believed to take place in diseases of any kind, acute as well as chronic. “Him fever,” says the Negro in the West Indies, “shall go when the water come low. Him alway come hot when the tide high.” If the Negroes had ever heard the theory of the tides which Herrera mentions, they would readily believe it, and look upon it as completely explaining the ground of their assertion; for according to that theory the tides are caused by a fever of the sea, which rages for six hours, and then intermits for as many more.