296 COSMOS. 



of having given the first, and indeed a very accurate descrip- 

 tion of a nebula. In the preface to his Mundus Jovialis* he 

 relates, that "on the 15th of December, 1612, he observed a 

 fixed object differing in appearance from any he had ever seen. 

 It was situated near the 3rd and northern star of Andromeda's 

 girdle ; seen with the naked eye, it appeared to him to be a 

 a mere cloud, and by the aid of the telescope he could not 

 discover any signs of a stellar nature, a circumstance which 

 distinguished it from the nebulous stars in Cancer, and from 

 other nebulous clusters. All that could be recognized was a 

 whitish glimmering appearance, brighter in the centre, and 

 fainter towards the margins. With a diameter of of a 

 degree, the whole resembled a light seen from a great dis- 

 tance through half-transparent horn plates : (similis fere 

 splendor apparel, si a longinquo candela ardens per cornu pel- 

 lucidum de noctu cernatur)." Simon Marius hazards a con- 

 jecture whether this singular star be not of recent formation, 

 but will not give a decided opinion, although it strikes him as 

 singular that Tycho Brahe, who had enumerated all the stars 

 in the girdle of Andromeda, should have said nothing of this 

 nebulosa. The Mundus Jovialis, which first appeared in 1614, 

 indicates, therefore, as I have already observed elsewhere, 9 the 



led to the discovery of these stars not by any reasonings of 

 others, but by the result of my own investigations, and that they 

 were observed by me in Germany, about the very same time 

 or a little sooner than Galileo first saw them in Italy. To 

 Galileo, among the Italians, is therefore due the merit of 

 having first discovered these stars. But whether, among my 

 own countrymen in Germany, any person before me has dis- 

 covered and seen them, I have not as yet been able to ascer- 

 tain." 



8 Mundus Jovialis. anno 1609, delectus ope perspicilli Ed- 

 gier. (Noribergoe, 1614.) 



f Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 702. 



