THE UNIVERSE. OCEA.NIC DISCOVERIES. 295 



the newly discovered Brazils and in the South Indian 

 Islands, augmented the anxiety for the discovery of practi- 

 cal methods for finding the longitude. It was felt how 

 rarely the ancient imperfect Hipparchian method by lunar 

 eclipses could be applied, and the use of lunar distances was 

 already recommended, in 1514, by the Nuremberg astrono- 

 mer Johann Werner, and soon afterwards by Orontius 

 Finseus and Gemma Frisius. Unfortunately this method 

 long continued impracticable, until, after many vain attempts 

 with the instruments of Peter Apianus (Bienewitz) and 

 Alonso de Santa Cruz, the mirror sextant was invented in 

 1700 by Newton, and brought into use among mariners by 

 Hadley in 1731. 



The influence of the Arabian astronomers was also opera- 

 tive, in and through Spain, on the progress of nautical 

 astronomy. Many modes were, indeed, tried for determining 

 the longitude, which did not succeed ; but the failure was less 

 often attributed, at the time, to the imperfection of the 

 observation, than to errors of the press in the astronomical 

 ephemerides of Eegiomontanus. The Portuguese even sus- 

 pected the results of the astronomical data of the Spaniards, 

 whose tables were supposed to have been falsified from poli- 

 tical motives. ( 453 ) The suddenly awakened sense of the 

 want of those means which nautical astronomy, theoretically 

 at least, promised, shews itself in a particularly vivid man- 

 ner in the narratives of Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Piga- 

 fetta, and Andres de San Martin the celebrated pilot of 

 Magellan's expedition, who was in possession of Buy Falero's 

 method of finding the longitude. Oppositions of planets, 

 occupations of stars, differences of altitude between the 

 Moon and Jupiter, and changes of the Moon's declination, 



