ard of some Kurdish tribes to the south-west
of that place who, he was told, "are still idolatrous, worshipping
venerable oaks, great trees, huge solitary rocks, and other grand features
of nature." _Discoveries_, p. 9.

[88] Francois LENORMANT, _Les Betyles_ (extracted from the _Revue de
l'Histoire des Religions_, p. 12):--"The cuneiform inscriptions mention the
seven black stones worshipped in the principal temple of Urukh in Chaldaea,
which personify the seven planets." In the same paper a vast number of
facts are brought together which show how widely spread this worship was in
Syria and Arabia, and with what persistence it maintained itself, at least
until the preaching of Islamism. It would be easy to show that it still
subsists in the popular superstitions. As to this worship among the Greeks,
see also the paper by M. HEUZEY, entitled, _La Pierre sacree d'Antibes_
(_Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de France_, 1874, p. 99).

[89] BEROSUS, fragment 1. Sec. 3. in the _Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum_ of
CH. MUeLLER, vol. ii. p. 496.

[90] VIRGIL, _Bucolics_, viii. 69. See in the edition of Benoist
(Hatchette, 8vo, 1876) passages cited from Horace and Ovid, which prove
that the superstition in question was then sufficiently widespread to
enable poets to make use of it without too great a violation of
probability.

[91] This was very clearly seen by the ancients. It could not be put better
than by Cicero: "Principio Assyrii, propter planitiem magnitudinemque
regionum quas incolebant, cum caelum ex omni parte patens et apertum
intuerentur, trajectiones motusque stellarum observaverunt."--_De
Divinatione_, i. 1, 2.

[92] "Chaldaei ... diuturna observatione siderum scientiam putantur
effecisse, ut praedeci posset quid cuique eventurum et quo quisque fato
natus esset."--CICERO, _De Divinatione_, i. 1, 2.

[93] This has been clearly shown by LAPLACE in the _Precis de l'Histoire de
l'Astronomie_, which forms the fifth book of his _Exposition du Systeme du
Monde_ (fifth edition). He gives a _resume_ of what he believes to have
been the chief results obtained by the Chaldaean astronomers (pp. 12-14 in
the separate issue of the _Precis_ 1821, 8vo). It would now, perhaps, be
possible, thanks to recent discoveries, to give more precise and
circumstantial details than those of Laplace.

[94] AURES, _Essai sur le Systeme metrique assyrien_, p. 10 (in the
_Recueil de Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l'Archeologi