Note 2891 — BOOK X. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS.

532 years, according to Hardouin. Bailly says: “The first men who studied the heavens remarked that the revolution of the sun brought back the seasons in the same order. They thought that they observed that certain variations of the temperature depended upon the aspect of the moon, and attached different prognostics to the rising and setting of the stars, persuading themselves that the vicissitudes of things here below had regulated periods, like the movements of the heavenly bodies. From this arose the impression, that the same aspect, the same arrangement of all the stars, that had prevailed at the commencement of the world, would also attend its destruction; and that the period of this long revolution was the predestined duration of the life of nature. Another impression was the idea that the world would only perish at this epoch to be born again, and for the same order of things to recommence with the same series of celestial phenomena. Some fixed this universal renovation at the conjunction of all the planets, others at the return of the stars to the same point of the ecliptic; others, uniting these two kinds of revolutions, marked the term of the duration of all things at the moment at which the planets and the stars would return to the same primitive situation with regard to the ecliptic, or in other words, they conceived an immense period, which would include one or more complete revolutions of each of the planets. All these periods were called the ‘great year,’ or the ‘great revolution.’” Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne.