142 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL PORTION 



another which gives a difference of dates, placing it six 

 years earlier, or in 1006, (see Annales Sangallenses 

 majores in Perfcz, Monumenta Germanise historica 

 Scriptorum, T. i. 1826, p. 81). The authorship of the 

 supposed writings of Hepidannus has also been rendered 

 doubtful by recent investigations. The strange pheno- 

 menon of variability has been called by Chladni the 

 " conflagration and destruction of a fixed star." Hind, 

 (Notices of the Astron. Soc. Yol. viii. 1848, p. 156) 

 conjectures, that the star of Hepidannus may be identical 

 with the star which Ma-tuan-lin marks as having been 

 seen in China in February 1011, in Sagittarius, between 

 a and (j>. But in such case Ma-tuan-lin must have been 

 mistaken not only in the year, but also in the constellation 

 in which the star appeared. 



/. End of July 1203, in the tail of the Scorpion. 

 According to the Chinese notice, " a new star of a blueish 

 white light, without any luminous nebulosity, resembling 

 Saturn (Edouard Biot, in the Connaissance des temps 

 pour 1846, p. 68). 



m. Another Chinese observation from Ma-tuan-lin, 

 whose astronomical Notices, with the exact indication of 

 the positions of the comets and fixed stars, reascend to 

 613 years B. c. f or to the time of Thales and the 

 Expedition of Colseus of'Samos. The new star appeared 

 in the middle of December, 1230, between Ophiuchus 

 and the serpent. It " dissolved away" at the end' of 

 March 1231. 



n. Is the star whose appearance in 1264 is mentioned 

 by the Bohemian astronomer, Cyprianus Leovitius, (see 

 the star previously referred to, i, 945). At the same 



