288 COSMOS. 



The less regular distribution of masses of light gives to the - 

 zone of the southern sky situated between the parallels of 50° 

 and 80"^, which is so rich in crowded nebulous spots and starry 

 masses, a peculiar, and, one might almost say, picturesque 

 character, depending on the grouping of the stars of the first 

 and second magnitudes, and their separation by intervals, 

 which appear to the naked eye desert and devoid of radiance. 

 These singular contrasts — the Milky Way, which presents nu- 

 merous portions more brilliantly illumined than the rest, and 

 the insulated, revolving, rounded Magellanic clouds, and the 

 coal-bags, the larger of which lies close upon a beautiful con- 

 stellation — all contribute to augment the diversity of the pic- 

 ture of nature, and rivet the attention of the susceptible mind 

 to separate regions on the confines of the southern sky. One 

 of these, the constellation of the Southern Cross, has acquired 

 a peculiar character of importance from the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century, owing to the religious feelings of Christian 

 navigators and missionaries who have visited the tropical and 

 southern seas and both the Indies. The four principal stars 

 of which it is composed are mentioned in the Almagest, and, 

 therefore, were regarded in the time of Adrian and Antoninus 

 Pius as parts of the constellation of the Centaur.* It seems 

 singular that, since the figure of this constellation is so strik- 

 ing, and is so remarkably well defined and individualized, in 

 the same way as those of the Greater and Lesser Bear, the 

 Scorpion, Cassiopeia, the Eagle, and the Dolphin, these four 

 stars of the Southern Cross should not have been earlier sepa- 

 rated from the large ancient constellation of the Centaur ; and 

 this is so much the more remarkable, since the Persian Kaz- 

 wini, and other Mohammedan astronomers, took pains to dis- 

 cover crosses in the Dolphin and the Dragon. Whether the 

 courtly flattery of the Alexandrian literati, who converted 

 Canopus into a PtolemcBon, likewise included the stars of our 

 Southern Cross, for the glorification of Augustus, in a CcBsaris 

 thronon, never visible in Italy, is a question that can not now 

 be very readily answered.f At the time of Claudius Ptole- 

 mseus, the beautiful star at the base of the Southern Cross 

 had still an altitude of 6° 10' at its meridian passage at Alex- 

 andria, while in the present day it culminates there several 

 degrees below the horizon. In order at this time (1847) to 



* Compare the researches of Delambre and Eucke with Ideler, Uv 

 sprung der Sternnamen, s. xlix., 263 und 277 ; also my Examen Crit., t 

 iv., p. 319-324; t. v., p. 17-19, 30, and 230-234. 



\ PHn., ii., 70; Ideler, Sternnamen, s. 260 mid 295. 



