years, the
following observations will not perhaps be deemed unworthy of a "nook" in
your columns. A spark may blaze! I therefore throw it out to be fanned into
a more brilliant light by those of your readers whose studies peculiarly
fit them to inquire more searchingly into the subject. The Jews, it has
been remarked by various writers, were ignorant of _astronomy_. Both,
however, the Sabbatical and Jubilee years have been, as I conceive and will
endeavour to show, founded on astronomical observation, commemorative of no
particular event in Jewish history, but simply that of the moon's
revolutions; for instance, with reference to the _Sabbatical_ year,
allowing for a difference of four days and a half, which occurs _annually_
in the time of the moon's position on the equator, it would require, in
order to realise a number corresponding to the days (29) employed by the
moon in her synodical revolution round the earth, a period to elapse of
little less than six years and a half: thus exhibiting the Jews' _seventh_
or _Sabbatical year_, or year of rest. This result, besides being
instructive and commemorative of the moon's menstrual course, is at the
same time indicative, as each Sabbatical year rolls past, of the approach
of the "_finisher of the Seven Sabbaths of years_," or year of Jubilee, so
designated from its being to the chosen people of God, under the Jewish
dispensation, a year of "freedom and redemption," in commemoration of the
moon's _complete_ revolution, viz., her return to a certain position at the
precise time at which she set out therefrom, an event which takes place but
once in _fifty years_: in other words, if the moon be on the equator, say,
on the first day of February, and calculating twenty-nine days to the
month, or twelve lunations to the year, a cycle of fifty years, or "seven
Sabbaths of years," must elapse ere she will again be in that position on
the same day.

HIPPARCHUS.

Limehouse, March 31. 1851.

_Arms of Isle of Man._--The arms of the Isle of Man are gules, three legs
conjoined in the fess point, &c. &c. or. These arms were stamped on the old
halfpence of the island, and we may well call them the current coin.

In an old edition of the _Mythology of Natalis_ {374} _Comus_, Patavii,
1637, small 4to., at page 278., I find an Icon of Triptolemus sent by Ceres
in a chariot drawn by serpents, hovering in the clouds over what I suppose
to be Sicily, or Trinacria; and on a representation of