[ 2 



Bruno, Giordano, his cosmical views, 

 17 ; his martyrdom, 17. 



Busch, Dr., his estimate of the ve- 

 locity of light incorrect, 109. 



Catalogues, astronomical, their great 

 importance, 153 ; future disco- 

 veries of planetary bodies mainly 

 dependent on their completeness, 

 153; listof, 154; Halley's, Flam- 

 stead's, and others, 154 ; La- 

 lande's, Harding's, Bessfcl's, 155. 



Catasterisms of Eratosthenes, 119. 



a Centauri, Piazzi Smyth on, 198, 

 252 ; the nearest of the fixed 

 stars that have yet been mea- 

 sured, 261. 



Central body for the whole sidereal 

 heavens, existence of, doubtful, 

 268. 



Chinese Record of extraordinary 

 stars (of Ma-tuan-lin), 146, 210 

 215; deserving of confidence, 

 219. 



Clusters of stars, or stellar swarms, 

 189 ; list of the principal, 191. 



Coal -sacks, a portion of the Milky 

 Way in the southern hemisphere 

 so called, 185. 



Coloured rings afford a direct mea- 

 sure of the'intensity of light, 128. 



Coloured stars, 175 ; evidence of 

 change of colour in some, 177 ; 

 Sir John Herschel's hypothesis, 

 177 ; difference of colour usually 

 accompanied by difference of 

 brightness, 285. 



Comets, information regarding celes- 

 tial space, derived from observa- 

 tion on, 36, 47 ; number of visi- 

 ble ones, 204. 



Concentric rings of stars, a view 

 favoured by recent observation, 

 201. 



Constellations, arrangement of stars 

 into, very gradual. 160 



Contrasted colours of double stars, 

 282. 



Cosmical contemplation, extension 

 of. in the middle ages, 16. 



Cosmical vapour, question as to 

 condensation of, 44 ; Tycho 

 Brahe's and Sir William Her- 

 schel's theories, 208. 



" Cosmos/' a pseudo-Aristotelian 

 work, 16. 



Crystal vault of heaven, date of the 

 designation, 165 ; its signification 

 according to Empedocles, 165 ; 

 the idea favoured by the Fathers 

 of the Church, 168. 



Cyanometer, Arago's, 129. 



Dark cosmical bodies, question of, 

 222, 255. 



Delambre, on the velocity of light, 

 108. 



Descartes, his cosmical views, 21 ; 

 suppresses his work from defer- 

 ence to the Inquisition, 21. 



Dioptric tubes, the precursors of 

 the telescope, 53. 



Direct and reflected light, 57. 



Distribution of the fixed stars, ac- 

 cording to right ascension, 189. 



Dorpat table (Struve's) of multiple 

 stars, 278. 



Double stars, the name too indis- 

 criminately applied, 271 ; distri- 

 bution into optical and physical, 

 272 ; pointed out by Galileo as 

 useful in determining the parallax, 

 272 ; vast increase in their ob- 

 served number, 273, 279 ; those 

 earliest described, 273 ; number 

 in which a change of position has 

 been proved, 280; greater num- 

 ber of double stars in the north- 

 ern than in the southern hemi- 

 sphere, 281 ; occurrence of con- 

 trasted colours, 282 ; calculation 

 of their orbits, 287 ; table of the 

 elements, 289. 



Earth-animal, Kepler and Fludd's 

 fancies regarding the, 20. 



Edda-Songs, allusion to, 4, 5. 



Egypt, zodiacal constellations of, 

 their date, 163. 



