THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 291 



phere. Religious associations have given to one of these 

 regions, that of the Southern Cross, a peculiar interest 

 to Christian navigators, travellers, and missionaries, in the 

 tropical and southern seas, and in both the Indies. The four 

 principal stars of which the Cross is composed were regarded 

 in the Almagest, and in the age of Hadrian and Antoninus 

 Pius, as part of the constellation of the Centaur. ( 447 ) The 

 form of the Southern Cross is so striking, and so remarkably 

 individualised and detached, as is the case of the Greater 

 and Lesser Bear, the Scorpion, Cassiopea, the Eagle, and the 

 Dolphin, that it is almost surprising that those four stars 

 should not have been earlier separated from the large ancient 

 constellation of the Centaur ; it is, indeed, the more surpris- 

 ing, because the Persian Kazwini and other Mahometan 

 astronomers were at pains to make out crosses from stars in 

 the Dolphin and Dragon. Whether the courtly flattery of 

 the Alexandrian learned men, who transformed Canopus 

 into a " Ptolemseon," also applied the stars of our present 

 Southern Cross to the glorification of Augustus, by forming 

 them into a " Ca3saris thronon" ( 448 ) which was never visible 

 in Italy, remains somewhat uncertain. In the time of 

 Claudius Ptolema3us, the fine star at the foot of the Southern 

 Cross had still an altitude of 6 10' at its meridian passage 

 at Alexandria; whilst, at the present day, it culminates 

 several degrees below the horizon of that place. At this 

 time (1847), in order to see a Crucis at an altitude of 

 6 10', and taking refraction into account, we must be 10 

 to the south of Alexandria, or in 21 43' of N. lat. The 

 Christian anchorites in the Thebais may still have seen the 

 cross at an altitude of 10 in the fourth century. I doubt, 



