Note 7 — THE CONSTELLATIONS.—Camille Flammarion

The Chinese had designated them all, it is true, at the same epoch, but their groups as well as their denominations are absolutely different from ours, and do not appear to have exercised any influence on the foundations of astronomical history. It was another world, other methods, other inspirations, as if Asia and Europe formed two distinct planets. A distinguished author, M. Schlegel, published in 1875 a Chinese Uranography, which is composed of 670 asterisms, and of which he believes he can trace back the origin to 17,000 years before our era. His argument is not convincing, and it seems to me that the origin of the astronomy of the Celestial Empire can not be very much anterior to the reign of the Emperor Hoang-Ti—that is to say, to the Twenty-seventh Century before our era—and would go back at furthest to the time of Fou-Hi that is to say, to the Twenty-ninth Century. It was about the same epoch—the Twenty-eighth Century before our era—that the Egyptians, observing Sirius, the early rising of which announced the inundation of the Nile, formed their canicular year of 365 days.