Page:Chronologies and calendars (IA chronologiescale00macdrich).pdf/82



AVING now reviewed the principal chronologies which have originated in the process of time, it will be well, before giving a summary of the volume in the following chapter, to devote several sections to the important subject of those kindred arts and scicnees which have been, and are, most closely allied to chronology.

. Taking them in their natural order, astronomy may claim attention in the first place. It is worthy of notice that, to 'the ancients, Saturn was the outermost planet of the system, nothing beyond it being known. Ner, indeed, was it to be assumed that any more could possibly exist, because Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with the Sun, made seven celestial bodies of prime importance; and seven was the number of perfection.'

. It is also an impressive fact, which Sir Robert Ball mentions, that 'the stars have been studied, and same great astronomical discoveries have been made, untold ages before those to which our earliest historical records extend.' In those practically pre-historic times, the motion of the moon was the primary, and the apparent progression of the sun, the secondary part of the enquiry. Thereafter, observations more complete were attempted, whereby planetary conjunc-