THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 28$ 



Augustine. ( 444 ) The Canopo fosco (Canopus niger) of Ame- 

 rigo, is probably one of these " coal bags/' The acute Acosta 

 compares it to the darkened portion of the moon's disk in 

 partial eclipses, and appears to ascribe it to a void in space, or 

 to the absence of stars. Bigaud has shewn how the mention 

 of the ' ' coal bags/' of which Acosta expressly says that they 

 are visible in Peru but not in Europe, and that they move 

 like other stars round the South Pole, has been mistaken by 

 a celebrated astronomer for the first notice of spots in the 

 sun. ( 445 ) The knowledge of the two Magellanic clouds 

 has been erroneously ascribed to Pigafetta; I find that 

 Anghiera, from the observations of Portuguese navigators, 

 mentions these clouds eight years before the completion of 

 Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe: he compares 

 their mild brightness with that of the Milky Way. The larger 

 of the two clouds, however, appears not to have escaped the 

 clear sight of the Arabians. It was very probably the White 

 Ox " el Bakar" of their southern sky ; the " white patch/' of 

 which the astronomer Abdurrahman Sofi says that it cannot 

 be seen in Bagdad, or in the North of Arabia, but is seen 

 in the Tehama, and in the parallel of the Straits of Bab-el- 

 Mandeb. Under the Lagidae and subsequently, Greeks and 

 Eomans had passed over those regions without noticing, or 

 at least without mentioning in any writing which has come 

 down to us, this luminous cloud, which yet, in the latitude 

 of between 11 and 12 N., rose in the time of Ptolemy 3 

 above the horizon, and in that of Abdurrahmanii (1000 A.D.), 

 more than 4. ( 446 ) The meridian altitude of the middle 

 of the Nubecula Major may be now about 5 at Aden. It 

 usually happens that mariners first distinctly recognise the 

 Magellanic clouds in much more southerly latitudes, viz. 



