It did become separated from astronomy very shortly after, to be sure, and undoubtedly among the scientists it lost much of its prestige.

But it cannot be considered as entirely passed away, even to-day, and even if we leave out of consideration street-corner "astrologers" and fortune-tellers, whose signs may be seen in every large city, there still remains quite a large class of relatively intelligent people who believe in what they call "the science of astrology." Needless to say, such people are not found among the scientific thinkers; but it is significant that scarcely a year passes that some book or pamphlet is not published by some ardent believer in astrology, attempting to prove by the illogical dogmas characteristic of unscientific thinkers that astrology is a science.

The arguments contained in these pamphlets are very much the same as those of the astrologers three hundred years ago, except that they lack the quaint form of wording which is one of the features that lends interest to the older documents.

These pamphlets need not be taken seriously, but they are interesting as exemplifying how difficult it is, even in an age of science, to entirely stamp out firmly established superstitions.

Here are some of the arguments advanced in defence of astrology, taken from a little brochure entitled "Astrology Vindicated," published in 1898: "It will be found that a person born when the Sun is in twenty degrees Scorpio has the left ear as his exceptional feature and the nose (Sagittarius) bent towards the left ear.