TEE ORIGIN OF TEE CONSTELLATION-FIGURES. 



51 



and the speculations of the ingenious Dupuis 

 found favor with the great mathematician La- 

 place. 



Unfortunately, the evidence is not sufficiently 

 exact to be very trustworthy. In considering, 

 for instance, the chronological inquiries of New- 

 ton, one cannot but feel that the reliance placed 

 by him on the statements made by different writ- 

 ers is not justified by the nature of these state- 

 ments, which are for the most part vague in the 

 extreme. We owe many of them to poets who, 

 knowing little of astronomy, mixed up the phe- 

 nomena of their own time with those which they 

 found recorded in the writings of astronomers. 

 Some of the statements left by ancient writers 

 are, indeed, ludicrously incongruous ; insomuch 

 that Grotius not unjustly said of the account of 

 the constellations given by the poet Aratus, that 

 it could be assigned to no fixed epoch and to no 

 fixed place. However, this could not be the 

 place to discuss details such as are involved in 

 exact inquiries. I have indicated some of these 

 in an appendix to my treatise on " Saturn," and 

 others in the preface to my " Gnomonic Star At- 

 las ; " but, for the most part, they do not admit 

 very readily of familiar description. Let us turn 

 to less technical considerations, which, fortunate- 

 ly, are in this case fully as much to the point 

 as exact inquiries, seeing that there is no real 

 foundation for such inquiries in any of the avail, 

 able evidence. 



The first obvious feature of the old constella- 

 tions is one which somehow has not received the 

 attention it deserves. It is as instructive as any 

 of those which have been made the subject of 

 profound research. 



There is a great space in the heavens over 

 which none of the old constellations extend — ex- 

 cept the River Eridanus as now pictured, but we 

 do not know where this winding stream of stars 

 was supposed by the old observers to come to 

 an end. This great space surrounds the southern 

 pole of the heavens, and this shows that the first 

 observers of the stars were not acquainted with 

 the constellations which can be seen only from 

 places far south of Chaldea, Persia, Egypt, India, 

 China, and indeed of all the regions to which the 

 invention of astronomy has been assigned. What- 

 ever the first astronomers were, however profound 

 their knowledge of astronomy may have been (as 

 some imagine), they had certainly not traveled far 

 enough toward the south to know "the constella- 

 tions around the southern pole. If they had 

 been as well acquainted with geography as some 

 assert, if even any astronomer had traveled as 



far south as the equator, we should certainly have 

 had pictured in the old star-charts some constella- 

 tions in that region of the heaveus wherein modern 

 astronomers have placed the Octant, the Bird-of- 

 Paradise, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, the Tou- 

 can, the Net, and other uncelestial objects. 



In passing I may note that this fact disposes 

 most completely of a theory lately advanced — that 

 the constellations were invented in the southern 

 hemisphere, and that thus is to be explained the an- 

 cient tradition that the sun and stars have changed 

 their courses. For though all the northern con- 

 stellations would have been more or less visible 

 from parts of the southern hemisphere near the 

 equator, it it absurd to suppose that a southern 

 observer would leave untenanted a full fourth of 

 the heavens round the southern or visible pole, 

 while carefully filling up the space around the 

 northern or unseen pole with incomplete constel- 

 lations whose northern unknown portions would 

 include that pole. Supposing it for a moment 

 to be true, as a modern advocate of the southern 

 theory remarks, that " one of a race migrating 

 from one side to the other of the equator would 

 take his position from the sun, and fancy he was 

 facing the same way when he looked at it at noon, 

 and so would think the motion of the stars to 

 have altered instead of his having turned round," 

 the theory that astronomy was brought us from 

 south of the equator cannot possibly be admitted 

 in presence of that enormous vacant region around 

 the southern pole. I think, however, that, apart 

 from this, a race so profoundly ignorant as to 

 suppose any such thing, to imagine they were 

 looking north when in reality they were looking 

 south, can hardly be regarded as the first founders 

 of the science of astronomy. 



The great gap I have spoken of has long been 

 recognized. But one remarkable feature in its 

 position has not, to the best of my remembrance, 

 been considered. The vacant space is eccentric 

 with regard to the southern pole of the heavens. 

 The old constellations, the Altar, and the Centaur, 

 and the ship Argo, extend withfn twenty degrees 

 of the pole, while the Southern Fish and the 

 great sea-monster Cetus, which are the southern, 

 most constellations on the other side, do not 

 reach within some sixty degrees of the pole. 



Of course, in saying that this peculiarity has not 

 been considered, I am not suggesting that it has 

 not been noticed, or that its cause is in any way 

 doubtful or unknown. We know that the earth, 

 besides whirling once a day on its axis, and rush- 

 ing on its mighty orbit around the sun (spanning 

 some 184,000,000 miles), reels like a gigantic top, 



