246 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE UEANOLOGICAL 



Trans, for 1850, Part 11, PI. xxxv. fig. 1, Similar spiral 

 forms are seen in No. 99 Messier with a single central 

 nucleus, and in other northern nebulae. 



We have next to speak in greater detail than could be 

 done in the General Yiew of Nature ( 436 ) of an object un- 

 paralleled in the entire firmament, and which greatly enhances 

 the picturesque beauty, so to speak, of the southern celestial 

 hemisphere. The two Magellanic clouds (which were pro- 

 bably first called by Portuguese and then by Dutch and 

 Danish navigators, Cape-Clouds) ( 437 ), arrest the attention of 

 the traveller, as I have myself experienced, in the most 

 forcible manner, by their brightness, their remarkable isolated 

 position, and their revolution at unequal distances round 

 the southern pole. That the name which refers to Magel- 

 lan's voyage of circumnavigation was not their earliest de- 

 signation is proved by the express mention and description 

 of these luminous clouds by the Florentine, Andrea Corsali, 

 in his voyage to Cochin, and by Petrus Martyr de Anghiera, 

 Secretary to Ferdinand of Arragon, in his work de Rebus 

 Oceanicis et Orbe Novo (Dec. i. lib. ix. p. 96) ( 438 ). Both 

 these notices belong to the year 1515, whereas Pigafetta, 

 who accompanied Magellan, does not mention the " neb- 

 biette" in the journal of the voyage previous to January 

 1521, when the ship Victoria made her way from the Pata- 

 gonian Strait into the South Pacific Ocean. The older 

 name of " Cape-Clouds" is certainly not to be attri- 

 buted to the proximity of the still more southern constel- 

 lation of the Table-Mountain, which was itself only intro- 

 duced by Lacaille. The name may more probably refer to 

 the real Table-Mountain, and to the phenomenon, long 

 dreaded by seamen as portending tempest, of a small cloud 



