Till-; (N)i,()U or I'lii: staus. 135 



stars, Struve enumerates about 300 iu which both stars are 

 white.*' Procyon, Atair, the Pole Star, and more especially 

 (3 UrsfP Min. have a more or less decided yellow lifrht. We 

 have already eiuunerated among the larger red or reddish stars 

 Betelgeux, Arcturus, Aldebaran, Antares, and Pollux. Rum- 

 ker finds y Crucis of a fine red color, and my old friend. Cap- 

 tain Berard, who is an admirable observer, wrote from Mada- 

 gascar in 1817 that he had for some years seen a Cnicis grow- 

 ing red. The star ?/ Argus, which has been rendered cele- 

 brated by Sir John Herschel's observations, and to which I 

 shall soon refer more circumstantially, is undergoing a change 

 in color as well as in intensity of hglit. In the year 1843, 

 Mr. Mackay noticed at Calcutta that this star was similar in 

 color to Arcturus, and was therefore reddish yellow ;t but in 

 letters from Santiago de Chili, in Feb., 1850, Lieutenant Gil- 

 liss speaks of it as being of a darker color than Mars. Sir 

 John Herschel, at the conclusion of his Observations at the 

 Cai^e, gives a list of seventy-six ruby-colored small stars, of 

 the seventh to the ninth magnitude, some of which appear 

 in the telescope like drops of blood. The majority of the vari- 

 able stars are also described as red and reddish, | the excep- 



moreover unaccredited form of aeipidv), is likewise entirely eiToneous. 

 While the motion of heat and light is implied by the expression aeiptog, 

 the radical of the word 'LeipTjv represents the flowing tones of this phe 

 nomenon of nature. It appears to me probable tliat Setp^v is connect- 

 ed with elpecv (Plato, Crati/L, 398, D, to yap elpeiv XiyeLv kari), in which 

 the original sharp aspiration passed into a hissing sound." (From let 

 ters of Prof. Franz to me, January, 1850.) 



The Greek Se/p, the sun, easily admits, according to Bopp. " of be- 

 ing associated with the Sanscrit word srmr, which does not indeed sig- 

 nify the sun itself, but the heavens (as something shining). The ordi- 

 nary Sanscnt denomination for the sun is surya, a contraction of svdrya, 

 which is not used. The root svar signifies in general to shhie. The 

 Zend designation for the sun is hvare, with the h instead of the s. The 

 Greek -d^ep, ■&£po^, and d^spuog comes from the Sanscrit word gharma 

 (Nom. gkarmas), warmth, heat." 



The acute editor of the Rigveda, Max Miiller, obsei-ves, that " the 

 special Indian astronomical name of the Dog-star, Lubdhaka, which sig- 

 nifies a hunter, when considered in reference to the neighboring con- 

 stellation Orion, seems to indicate an ancient Ajian community of ideas 

 regarding these groups of stars." He is, moreover, principally inclined 

 " to derive "Eeipto^ from the Veda word sira (whence the adjective sair- 

 ya) and the root sri, to go, to wander ; so that the sun and the binght- 

 est of the stars, Sirius, were originally called wandering stars." (Com- 

 pare also Yott, Efymologische Forschungen, 1833, s. 130.) 



* Stnive, Stel/anim compositarum Mensurcc MicrometriccB, 1837, p. 

 Ixxiv. et Ixxxiii. 



t Sir John Herschel, Observations at the Capr, p. 34. 



t Madler's Asfro7iomic, s. 430. 



