402 OF THE NEW PLANET,

tic; those stars, which in the infancy of astrd-*nomy were in Aries, being now got into Taurus;those of Taurus into Gemini, &c. So that thestars which rose and set at any particular seasonof the year, in the times of Hesiod, Eudoxus,Virgil, &c. will not at present answer to thedescriptions given of them by those writers.

“ Some fay the zodiac constellationsHave long since chang’d their antique stationsAbove a sign, and prove the fameIn Taurus now, once in the R.am.

Affirm the Trigons chop’d and chang’dThe watr’y with the fiery rang’d:

That in twelve hundred years and odd,

The fun has left his ancient road,

And nearer to the earth is come'Love fifty thousand miles from home.”

Hudibras,

It was by means of this retrogressive motionof the equinoctial points, that Sir Isaac Newtonwas enabled to six the time of one of the mostremarkable epocha’s of chronological history,and to throw some light upon the fables of an-tiquity. He proves, from the testimonies ofseveral ancient authors, that Chiron the Centaur,who was one of the Argonauts, constructed a-sphere, on which the Colure of the Equinoxeswas made to pass by certain stars, and to cutthe ecliptic in the middle of the signs Aries andLibra. And by finding, what stars the fame

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