stars, would be discovered an entirely new method of grouping the heavenly bodies, and what might be called the chemical constellations. Orffyreus, who destroyed his machine rather than allow the Landgrave of Hesse to see inside it,--Orffyreus, so admired by S'Gravesande, the author of the "Matheseos Universalis Elements,"--would be laughed at by our mechanicians. A village veterinary surgeon would not inflict on horses the remedy with which Galen treated the indigestions of Marcus Aurelius. What is the opinion of the eminent specialists of our times, Desmarres at the head of them, respecting the learned discoveries of the seventeenth century by the Bishop of Titiopolis in the nasal chambers? The mummies have got on; M. Gannal makes them differently, if not better, than the Taricheutes, the Paraschistes, and the Cholchytes made them in the days of Herodotus,--the first by washing the body, the second by opening it, and the third by embalming it. Five hundred years before Jesus Christ it was perfectly scientific, when a king of Mesopotamia had a daughter possessed by the devil, to send to Thebes for a god to cure her. It is not exactly our way to treat epilepsy. In the same way have we given up expecting the kings of France to cure scrofula. In 371, under Valens, son of Gratian le Cordier, the judges summoned to their bar a table accused of sorcery. This table had an accomplice named Hilarius. Hilarius confessed the crime. Ammianus Marcellinus has preserved for us his confession, received by Zosimus, count and fiscal advocate:-- "Construximus, magnifici judices, ad cortinæ similitudinem Delphicæ infaustam hanc mensulam quam videtis; movimus tandem." Hilarius was beheaded. Who was his accuser? A learned geometrician and magician,--the same who advised Valens to decapitate all those whose names began with a _Theod._ To-day you may call yourself Theodore, and even make a table turn, without the fear of a geometrician causing your head to be cut off.