most recent investigations and discoveries of science. Of the watery vapors condensed above the expanse of space many of the ancient writers had a far more correct knowledge than had those who translated these chapters from the original into the various modern languages. In the Psalms we read, "Praise him, ... ye waters that be above the heavens;" in the Song of the Three Holy Children, "O all ye waters that be above the heavens." Theophilus speaks of the "visible sky as having drawn to itself a portion of the waters of chaos at the time of the creation." Saint Augustine says that the firmament has been formed "between the upper and the lower waters," and quotes Genesis i. 6 and 7, as his authority. Thousands of years ago, as far back as the days of the Pythagoreans, and even long before, mankind was acquainted with the mariner's compass, telescopic tubes, and glass lenses; they knew that the moon receives her light by reflection from the sun, of the presence of mountains and valleys on the lunar surface, that her day and night are each a fortnight in length, that there were other planets known to the Egyptians besides the seven known to the Greeks (the Brahmans reckoned fifteen of them), that the sun is the center of our planetary system, that the earth and the other planets revolve around it, that the earth is round and rotates on its own axis daily, that weight is a principal element in the maintenance of these rotations, that the fixed stars are suns, and that the Milky Way appears white from the number of stars which it contains. Kircher quotes from an ancient Syrian author the philosophy of the sidereal system, dividing it into many layers or spheres attached to orbits, each presided over by a spirit. In the eighth sphere are placed the fixed stars, "still higher two other layers of stars not less luminous, and of different sizes, the nebulæ and the small stars of the Milky Way, and the whole is surrounded by the celestial waters, which spread over the whole firmament, and which compose the great sea of light and the boundless ocean." The sources of all this wondrous knowledge can be traced back through Chaldea, Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and, through the colony of Meroë, to India. ROOT-MEANINGS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORDS USED IN THE MOSAIC NARRATIVE OF CREATION. Aleim ("corruptly called Elohim by the modern Jews, but always Aleim in the synagogue copies") means the Strong Forces (or, by subsequent impersonation, subaltern gods), operating to carry out the purposes and execute the plans of Jeove. Al, the root, signifies Strong, strength, a ram; Al-e means Strong in a personal sense; Aleim (plural) means the Forces, the Strong-ones, the Powers, and in Egyptian mythology, the subordinate, or executive, gods, the demi-urgi. Exodus vii. 1, "And the Lord [Jeove] said unto Moses, See I have made thee a god [Aleim] to Pharaoh; thou shalt speak all that I command thee."