184 COSMOS. 



which the principal star is white, and the companion blue ; 

 and some in which both stars have a blue light, 58 (as 8 Serp. 

 and 59 Androm.) Occasionally, as in the stellar swarm near 

 ic of the Southern Cross, which was mistaken by Lacaille for 

 a nebulous spot, more than a hundred variously- coloured red, 

 green, blue, and bluish-green stars are so closely thronged to- 

 gether that they appear in a powerful telescope " like a superb 

 piece of fancy jewellery." 59 



The ancients believed they could recognize a remarkable 

 symmetry in the arrangement of certain stars of the 1st 

 magnitude. Thus their attention was especially directed 

 to the four so-called regal stars which are situated at op- 

 posite points of the sphere, Aldebaran and Antares, Re- 

 gulus and Fomalhaut. We find this regular arrangement, 

 of which I have already elsewhere treated, 60 specially referred 

 to in a late Roman writer, Julius Firmicus Maternus, 61 who 

 belonged to the age of Constantine. The differences of right 

 ascension in these regal stars, stellce regales, are llh. 57m. and 

 12h. 49m. The importance formerly attached to this subject is 

 probably owing to opinions transmitted from the East, which 

 gained a footing in the Roman empire under the Caesars, 

 together with a strong national predilection for astrology. 

 The leg, or north star of the Great Bear, (the celebrated star 

 of the Bull's leg in the astronomical representations of Den- 

 dera, and in the Egyptian Book of the Dead) is perhaps the 

 star indicated in an obscure passage of Job (ch. ix. ver. 9), 

 in which Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades are contrasted with 

 " the chambers of the south," and in which the four quarters 



68 Struve, Stellce comp., p. Ixxxii. 



59 Sir John Herschel, Observations at the Cape, pp. 17, 102. 

 ("Nelulce and Clusters, No. 3435.") 



60 Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres et Monumens des people* 

 indigenes de VAmerique, torn. ii. p. 55. 



61 Julii Firmici Materni Astron., libri viii. Basil, 1551, 

 lib. vi. cap. i. p. 150. 



