94 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL PORTION 



the great epoch of Copernicus,, and almost to that of Tycho 

 Brahe. 



Since the beginning of the 16th century the extension of 

 navigation in tropical seas and high southern latitudes 

 has operated powerfully in enlarging the knowledge of 

 the firmament, though it has done so in a less degree than 

 has the employment of telescopes, began a century later. 

 By both, new regions of space before unknown have been 

 opened to our view. I have noticed in a previous volume 

 ( 181 ) what was related of the magnificence of the Southern 

 Hemisphere, first by Amerigo Yespucci, and next by 

 Magellan and by Elcano's companion Pigafetta, and how 

 the black patches (Coal sacks) were described by Yicente 

 Yanez, and the Magellauic Clouds by Anghiera and Andrea 

 Corsali. Here, also, contemplative astronomy preceded 

 measuring astronomy. The riches of the firmament near 

 the South Pole, a region which is really, as is now well 

 known, comparatively poor in stars, were described with 

 such exaggeration, that Cardauus Polyhistor said that Yes- 

 pucci saw there 10000 stars with his unassisted eyes. ( 182 ) 

 The first persons who seriously began the task of observing 

 the stars of the Southern Hemisphere were Eriedrich Hout- 

 mann and Petrus Theodori of Ernden (who, according to 

 Olbers, was the same person as Dircksz Keyser) . They mea- 

 sured distances of stars at Java and Sumatra, and the most 

 southern stars were now entered in the celestial maps of 

 Bartsch, Hondius, and Bayer, as well as, by the diligent care 

 of Kepler, in the Eudolphine star-catalogue of Tycho Brahe. 



Scarcely half a century after Magellan's circumnavigation 

 of the globe, Tycho Brahe began his admirable examination 

 of the position of the fixed stars, a work surpassing in 



