60 COSMOS. 



16tli magnitude in this space. These stars are projected on 

 the wholly unresolved, uniformly bright and unspeckled neb- 

 ula.* 



The Black SjjecJcs which attracted the attention of Portu- 

 guese and Spanish pilots as early as the close of the fifteenth 

 and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, circle round the 

 southern pole opposite to the Magellanic Light-clouds, al- 

 though at a greater distance from it. They are probably, as 

 already remarked, the Canopo fosco of the "three Canopi," 

 described by Amerigo Vespucci in his third voyage. I find 

 the first definite notice of these spots in the first Decade of 

 Anghiera's work, "De Rebus Oceanicis" (Dec. i., lib. 9, ed. 

 1533, p. 20, b). "Interrogati a me nautae qui Yicentium Ag- 

 nem Pinzonum fuerant comitati (1499), an antarcticum vide- 

 rint polum : stellam se nullam huic Arcticse similem, qu89 

 discern! circa punctum (polum ?) possit, cognovisse inquiunt. 

 Stellarum tamen aliam, ajunt, se prospexisse faciem deii- 

 samque quandam ab horizonte vaporosam caliginem, qusa 

 oculos fere obtenebraret."t The word Stella is used here for 

 a celestial constellation, and the narrators may not have ex- 

 plained themselves very distinctly in reference to a caligo 

 -which, obscured their sight. Father Joseph Acosta, of Me- 

 dina del Campo, gives a more satisfactory account of the 

 Black Specks and the cause of this phenomenon, He com- 

 pares them, in his Historia Natural cle las Indias (lib. i., 

 cap. 2), to the eclipsed portion of the Moon's disk in respect 

 to color and form. " As the Milky Way,'' he says, "is more 

 brilliant because it is composed of denser celestial matter, and 

 hence gives forth more light, so likewise the Black Specks, 

 which are not visible in Europe, are entirely devoid of light, 

 because they constitute a portion of the heavens which is 

 barren, i. e., composed of very attenuated and transparent 

 matter." The error of a distinguished astronomer in sup- 

 posing that this description referred to the spots of the Sun,| 

 seems scarcely less singular than that the missionary Richaud 



* See Observ. at ihe Cape, § 20-23 and 133, the beautiful drawing, pi. 

 ii., fig. 4, and a special inap of the graphical analysis. — PI. x., as well 

 as Outlines, § 896, pi. v., fig. 1. 



t " I asked some mariners who had accompanied Vicentius Agnes 

 Finzo (1499) whether they saw the antarctic pole, and they told mo 

 that they did not observe any star like our North Star, which may bo 

 Been about the arctic pole, but that they noticed stars in another form, 

 having the appearance of a dense and dark vapor rising frcni the hori 

 Eon, which almost obscured their vision. 



X Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 287, and note. 



