PORTION OF THE COSMOS. NEBULA. 233 



the exception of one remarkable local assemblage, which is 

 indeed even more crowded than the nebulous region of Yirgo 

 in the northern hemisphere ; for of the Magellanic clouds, 

 Nubecula major alone comprehends 300 nebulae. The 

 region around the pole is poor in nebulas in both hemis- 

 pheres, but as far as 15 of polar distance it is poorer 

 round the southern than round the northern pole in the 

 proportion of 4 to 7. The present North Pole has a small 

 nebula only 5 minutes distant from it ; a similar one, to 

 which Sir John Herschel very properly gives the name of 

 "Nebula Polarissima Australis/' (No. 3176 of his Cape 

 Catalogue; R. A., 9h. 27 m 56 s , N. P. D., 179 34' 14") 

 is still 25 minutes from the South Pole. The comparatively 

 starless desert round the southern pole, and especially the 

 absence of a pole-star visible to the unassisted eye, were the 

 subject of bitter complaint to Amerigo Yespucci and Yicente 

 Yanez Pinzon, when, at the end of the fifteenth century, 

 they advanced far beyond the Equator to Cape St. Augustin, 

 and when Yespucci even supposed that the fine passage of 

 Dante, " lo mi volsi a man destra e posi mente . . .," and 

 the four stars, " Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente" 

 referred to antarctic circumpolar stars ( 401 ). 



Hitherto we have been considering the nebulae in respect 

 to their number and dissemination on what is called the 

 firmament, an apparent distribution which must not be con- 

 founded with the actual distribution in space. From this 

 examination we now pass to their wonderful diversity in 

 individual form. This is sometimes regular, (spherical, 

 elliptical in various degrees, annular, planetary, or re- 

 sembling a photosphere surrounding a star) ; and sometimes 

 irregular or amorphous and as difficult of classification as 



