OP THE COSMOS. NUMBER OF THE FIXED STARS. 91 



p. 15, Halma), were very incomplete (iraw 6Xoo-xf> c ), yet 

 there can be no doubt that they both determined the decli- 

 nation of many stars, and that these determinations preceded 

 by almost a century and a half Hipparchus' s Table of Fixed 

 Stars. It is known (although we have only Pliny's statement 

 of the fact) that Hipparchus was stimulated by the appear- 

 ance of a new star to pass the heavens in review and to 

 determine the places of the stars. This statement has, how- 

 ever, more than once been regarded as merely the echo of a 

 tale invented after the period to which it relates; ( 173 ) and 

 it is certainly remarkable that Ptolemy does not allude to it 

 in the slightest degree. It is, however, incontestably true 

 that it was the sudden appearance of a bright star in Cassio- 

 peia (November, 1572) that occasioned Tycho Brahe to under- 

 take his great star-catalogue. According to an ingenious con- 

 jecture of Sir John Herschel,( 174 ) a star which appeared in 

 the constellation of Scorpio in the month of July, 134 

 years before our Era (according to the Chinese annals under 

 the reign of Wou-ti, of the Han Dynasty), may very well be 

 the same which Pliny mentions. Its appearance falls six 

 years before the epoch at which (according to Ideler's re- 

 searches) Hipparchus prepared his catalogue. Edouard 

 Biot, of whom science has been too early deprived, dis- 

 covered the notice of this cosmical event in the celebrated 

 collection of Ma-tuan-lin, which contains all the appearances 

 of comets and unusual stars between the years 613 B.C., 

 and A.D. 1222. 



The tripartite didactic poem of Aratus, ( 175 ) to which we 

 owe the only writing of Hipparchus which has come down 

 to us, belongs to about the period of Eratosthenes, Timo- 

 charis, and Aristyllus. The astronomical (not meteorological) 



