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brothers and sisters, not twins, more frequently between sisters, and occasionally between brothers.

Driven to concede these things, astrologers in modern times have been compelled to say:

We do not deny the existence of many difficulties and anomalies, and fully admit that astral science is incompetent to explain the divergences in the human constitution and character without a free use of the doctrine of heredity. Our contention is that the two theories complete each other, the latter accounting for the element of stability, the former for the element of variability. ^[1]

An illustration of the wild manner in which a person competent to edit Zadkiel's Almanac may reason can be found in the "Text-book of Astrology," p. 164:

Astrologers find that unless Mars afflicts either the ascendant or luminaries at birth (or in the fatal train of directions) there is no liability to take the smallpox.

How this can be ascertained without an acquaintance with the nativities of an immense number of persons and their histories in relation to smallpox is not set forth. The investigation is so difficult that they could not possibly show that every person who ever took smallpox was born when Mars was in a certain relation to the birth. They are not kind enough to inform us whether the vaccination of persons born under these circumstances would or would not "take." They may hereafter carry it a little farther, and dispose of the liability to hydrophobia, cholera, yellow fever, etc., in a similar way!

Here is another case from the same source. An individual was born when the sun and moon were evilly configurated with Saturn and had no assistance from Jupiter. In harmony with theories of

1. Wilson, "Dictionary of Astrology."