These may not be the only ones among the various customs, sayings, and names that are due in one way or other to this primitive method of arranging the seasons by the positions of the stars, especially of those most remarkable and conspicuous ones the Pleiades, but they are those that are best authenticated. If the connection between the Pleiades and the festival of the dead, the new year and a deluge, can be clearly made out; if the tradition of the latter be found as universal as that of the former, and be connected with it in the Mosaic narrative; if we can trace all these traditions to the south of the equator, and find numerous further traditions connected with islands, we may find some reason for believing in their theory who suggest that the early progenitors of the human race (? all of them) were inhabitants of some fortunate islands of even temperature in the southern hemisphere, where they made some progress in civilisation, but that their island was swallowed up by the sea, and that they only escaped by making huge vessels, and, being carried by the waves, they landed on continental shores, where they commemorated yearly the great catastrophe that had happened to them, notifying its time by the position of the Pleiades, making it a feast of the dead whom they had left behind, and opening the year with the day, whether it were spring or not, and handing down to their descendants and to those among whom they came, the traditions and customs which such events had impressed upon them. Whether such an account be probable, mythical, or unnatural, there are certainly some strange things to account for in connection with the Pleiades. CHAPTER VI. THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE HEAVENS ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS. Many and various have been the ideas entertained by reflecting men in former times on the nature and construction of the heavenly vault, wherein appeared those stars and constellations whose history we have already traced. Is it solid? or liquid? or gaseous? Each of these and many other suppositions have been duly formulated by the ancient philosophers and sages, although, as we are told by modern astronomy, it does not exist at all. In our study of the ancient ideas about the structure of the universe, we will commence with that early and curious system which considered the heavenly vault to be material and solid.