TABLE-MOVING AND ALPHABET-RAPPING IN THE FOURTH

CENTURY.

The following remarkable narration is the confession of a conspirator named Hilarius, who was accused of resorting to unlawful arts for the purpose of discovering who should be the successor to the Roman Emperor Valens, who died A.D. 378. We are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian, that, while under torture, he thus addressed his judges:

With direful rites, O august judges, we prepared this unfortunate little table, which you see, of laurel branches, in imitation of the Delphic cortina, (or tripod,) and when it had been duly consecrated by imprecation of secret charms and many long and choric ceremonies, we at length moved it. The method of moving it, when it was consulted on secret matters, was as follows: It was placed in the midst of a house purified with Arabian odors; upon it was placed a round dish, made of various metallic substances, which had the twenty-four letters of the alphabet curiously engraved round the rim, at accuratelymeasured distances from each other. One clothed with linen garments, carrying branches of a sacred tree, and having, by charms framed for the purpose, propitiated the deity who is the giver of prescience, places other lesser cortina on this larger one, with ceremonial skill. He holds over them a ring which has been subjected to some mysterious preparation, and which is suspended by a very fine Carpathian thread. This ring, passing over the intervals, and falling on one letter after the other, spells out heroic verses pertinent to the questions asked. We then thus inquired who should succeed to the government of the empire. The leaping ring had indicated two syllables, (THE-OD;) and on the addition of the last letter one of the persons present cried out, "Theodorus."

Theodorus, and many others, were executed for their share in this dark transaction, (see Gibbon;) but Theodosius the Great finally succeeded to the empire, and was, of course, supposed to be the person indicated by the magic rites. The above literal translation is given by the learned Dr. Maitland

in a little book, lately published, Essay on False Worship, London, 1856. The original was hardly intelligible, till light had been thrown on it by recent practices, of which we have all heard so much. The coincidence is, to say the least, extraordinary, and opens views which are briefly considered in the above-mentioned work.

AUSCULTATION AND PERCUSSION.

Laennec invented the stethoscope and perfected his discoveries in the physical diagnosis of the diseases of the heart and lungs, in 1816.

Avenbrugger published his work on Percussion in 1761.

One hundred and fifty years before Laennec's suddenly conceived act of applying a roll of paper to the breast of a female patient gave birth to thoracic acoustics, that ingenious and philosophic man, Robert Hooke, said in his writings :

"There may be a possibility of discovering the internal motions and actions of bodies by the sound they make. Who knows, but that as in a watch we may hear the beating of the balance, and the running of the wheels, and the striking of the hammers, and the grating of the teeth, and a multitude of other noises, who knows, I say, but that it may be possible to discover the motions of internal parts of bodies, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, by the sounds they make?-that one may discover the works performed in the several offices and shops of a man's body, and thereby discover what engine is out of order, what works are going on at several times and lie still at others, and the like? I have this encouragement not to think all these things impossible, though never so much derided by the generality of men, and never so seemingly mad, foolish, and fantastic, that as the thinking them impossible cannot much improve my knowledge, so the believing them possible may perhaps be an occasion for taking notice of such things as another would pass by without regard as useless, and somewhat more of encouragement I have from experience that I have been able to hear very plainly the beating of a man's

heart; and it is common to hear the motion of the wind to and fro in the intestines; the stopping of the lungs is easily discovered by the wheezing. As to the motion of the parts one among the other, to their becoming sensible they require. either that their motions be increased or that the organ (the ear) be made more nice and powerful, to sensate and distinguish them as they are; for the doing of both which I think it is not impossible but that in many cases there may be HELPS found."

THE STEREOSCOPE.

Sir David Brewster, inquiring into the history of the stereoscope, finds that its fundamental principle was well known even to Euclid; that it was distinctly described by Galen fifteen hundred years ago; and that Giambattista Porta had, in 1599, given such a complete drawing of the two separate pictures as seen by each eye, and of the combined picture placed between them, that we recognize in it not only the principle, but the construction, of the stereoscope.

PREDICTIONS OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

Seneca, in his Medea, Act ii, thus shadowed forth this event fifteen centuries before its occurrence :

Venient annis Sæcula seris,

Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat Tellus,
Tiphysque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris Ultima Thule.

(After the lapse of years, ages will come in which Ocean shall relax his chains around the world, and a vast continent shall appear, and Tiphysthe pilot-shall explore new regions, and Thule shall be no longer the utmost verge of the earth.)

"A prediction," says the commentator, "of the Spanish discovery of America."

Before Seneca's lines were written, Plato had narrated the Egyptian legend that, engulfed in the ocean, but sometimes visible, was the island of Atalantis, supposed to mean the Western world.

Pulci, the friend of Lorenzo de Medici, in his Morgante Maggiore, written before the voyage of Columbus and before the physical discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus, introduces this remarkable prophecy; (alluding to the vulgar belief that the Columns of Hercules were the limits of the earth.) Know that this theory is false: his bark

The daring mariner shall urge far o'er

The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set,
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way.
Men shall descry another hemisphere;
Since to one common centre all things tend,
So earth, by curious mystery divine,
Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres.
At our antipodes are cities, states,
And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore.
But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light.

Dante, two centuries before, put this language into the mouth of Ulysses:

The broad Atlantic first my keel impressed,

I saw the sinking barriers of the west,

And boldly thus addressed my hardy crew?—

While yet your blood is warm, my gallant train,
Explore with me the perils of the main

And find new worlds unknown to mortal view.
Inferno, Canto 26.

He then proceeds to mention the discovery of a mountainous island, after five months' sailing.

The probability of a short western passage to India is mentioned by Aristotle, De Cœlo, ii., a view confirmed in stronger terms afterwards by Edrisi, the Arabian geographer, Strabo, Francis Bacon, Cardinal de Alliaco (Imago Mundi), and Toscanelli.

Triumphs of Engenuity.

Though there were many giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I say, with Didacus Stella, "A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself."-BURTON, Anat. of Melancholy.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE.

In his solitary study sat a young man, pale and thoughtful. His eyes were fixed upon myriads of numerals, through whose complexity his far-reaching mind saw into the untold mysteries of the solar universe. His glass was not pointed to the heavens, his eyes looked not out upon the stars, but his soul, in deep abstraction, pondered over the perturbations of Uranus, as noted for many a year before by many a casual observer. He measured the intensity and the direction of the disturbing forces, questioned the planet that was seen and known concerning the unknown cause of its irregularities, and compelled a star, itself beyond the reach of the common eye, to tell of the whereabouts, the volume, the orbit, of its fellow, which no eye, even through an optic-glass, had ever yet seen, and whose very existence then came for the first time upon the mental vision of the youthful sage through the power of numerical calculation. His was a faith. It was the evidence of things not seen. But it was like that higher and better faith of which spake the great Apostle of the Gentiles,-fast and sure. Full of his discovery, Le Verrier offered his conclusions to the Academy; but learned men, when assembled in bodies, give to enthusiasts but a cold reception. Le Verrier, sure of his position, then wrote to Dr. Galle, the Astronomer-Royal in Berlin, asking him to point his powerful glass to a certain quarter of the heavens, where must be found at that time the last of the planets. And there it was; and thence it was traced upon its mighty way, bending, like