316 COSMOS. 



We have hitherto considered nebula in reference to their 

 number and their distribution in what we call the firmament, 

 an apparent distribution which must not, however, be 



Since, in the middle ages, and probably for the sake of re- 

 placing the two Dancers, xP ev ' Tai ) of Hyginus (Poet. Astron. 

 iii. 1), *". e. the Ludentes of the Scholiast of Germanicus, 

 or the Custodes of Vegetius in the Lesser Wain, the stars 

 /3 and <y of Ursa Minor had been denominated the Guards, 

 le due guardie, of the neighbouring north pole, on account 

 of their rotation round that point, and as this designation, 

 as well as the habit of determining polar altitudes by 

 these Guards (Pedro de Medina, Arte de Navegar, 1545, 

 lib. v. caps. 4-7, pp. 183-195,) was familiar to the European 

 pilots of all nations in the northern seas ; so erroneous conclu- 

 sions led men to believe from analogy that they could recog- 

 nize in the southern horizon the polar star which had so long 

 been sought for. It was not until Amerigo Vespucci s 

 second voyage (from May, 1499, to September, 1500), when 

 he and Vicente Yanez Pinzon (both voyages are perhaps one 

 and the same) advanced as far in the southern hemisphere 

 as Cape San Augustin, that they devoted themselves dili- 

 gently, but to no purpose, to the search for a visible star iii 

 the immediate vicinity of the South Pole. (Bandini, Vita e 

 Lettere di Amerigo Vespucci, 1745, p. 70; Anghiera, 

 Oceanica, 1510, dec. i. lib. ix. p. 96; Humboldt, Examen 

 crit. torn. iv. pp. 205, 319, 325.) The South Pole was then 

 situated within the constellation Octans, so that /J of Hydrus, 

 if we follow the reduction of Brisbane's Catalogue, had still 

 a southern declination of fully 80 5'. " While I was engaged 

 in observing the wonders of the southern heavens, and in 

 vainly seeking for a pole-star, I was reminded," says Vespucci, 

 in his letter to Pietro Francesco de' Medici, " of an expression 

 made use of by our Dante, when, in the first chapter of the 

 Purgatorio, he depicts a presumed passage from one hemi- 

 sphere to the other, and in describing the Antartic Pole, says, 



Io mi volsi a man destra In my opinion the 



author intended in these verses to indicate the pole of the 

 other firmament by his four stars (non viste mai fitorch' alia 



