572 Royal Astronomical Society. 



these constellations may seem, yet few of them will be found to 

 express with any accuracy the figures which they are intended to 

 represent. It is probable that out of the strange mixture of men, 

 animals, and other objects, which the first astronomers invented, 

 the imaginative Greeks made the present combination or selection. 

 That the Greeks derived these constellations from an Asiatic people, 

 and that they did not (as Newton supposed) invent them shortly 

 after the Argonautic expedition, is evident from their not being 

 able, for some time at least, to explain the constellations according 

 to their mythology. I need only mention the Greek constellation 

 E»/ yoraaiv, or kneeling figure, which we now call Hercules, and the 

 Opvis, or bird, which we now designate as the Swan ; neither of 

 which are explained in their mythology. Combined with this my- 

 thology the constellations were sung by the Greek and Roman poets, 

 and are now become classical. In the present advanced state of 

 astronomy, however, we do not arrange the stars wholly according to 

 the constellations, but according to their right ascensions ; yet these 

 constellations are a valuable assistance towards an artificial memory, 

 and afford us an excellent method whereby we are enabled to know 

 and distinguish the various stars in the heavens, and to remember 

 and record their places. The ancient Greeks reckoned only forty- 

 six constellations, or, at most, forty-seven, if we include the XrjXai, 

 or claws, of the Scorpion as a separate constellation, which had been 

 denoted as Libra before the existence of the Alexandrian school ; 

 to which Hipparchus added the forty- eighth, namely, Equuleus. 

 The flattery of some courtiers was exerted to create two other con- 

 stellations, viz. the Hair of Berenice and Antinous, but without 

 success ; till Tycho at last gave them a permanent place in the 

 heavens. 



In the fifteenth century, when navigation was extended beyond 

 the equator, and sailors noted those stars in the southern hemi- 

 sphere which were not visible to the ancients, they also found it 

 convenient and useful to adopt the same plan of grouping the new 

 stars into constellations. They did not, however, adapt them to 

 the Greek mythology, but selected principally such objects as pre- 

 sented themselves in the newly-discovered countries : whence we 

 have, for the southern constellations, the Phoenix, the Toucan, the 

 Little Water-snake, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, the Fly, the 

 Chameleon, the Bird of Paradise, the Peacock, the Indian, and the 

 Crane. The ancients took only those parts of the heavens, as the 

 ground-work of the constellations, where the bright stars existed : 

 consequently, there were many places where there were no con- 

 stellations, and the stars which were scattered over such situations 

 were called ctfiopcjxoroi, or informes. There was no inconvenience 

 in this : but some of these empty spaces were very great, and ex- 

 hibited here and there stars that seemed to be as much entitled to 

 be formed into a constellation as several of the existing ones. 

 Therefore modern astronomers, as Bartschius relates, (and, perhaps, 

 he himself, partly) invented and formed the new constellations, 

 called the Camelopard, the Unicorn, the Fly, and the rivers Jordan, 



