NOTES. XV 



P) p. 59. Aul. Gell. Noct. Alt. V. xviii. 



(3) p. 65. Schellinq's Bruno on the Divine and Natural Principles of 

 Things, p. 181. 



( 31 ) p. 76. The optical considerations relative to the difference in the 

 intensity of light presented by a single luminous point and by a disk sub- 

 tending an appreciable angle, are explained in Arago's Analyse des Travaux de 

 Sir "William Herschel (Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 18-42, pp. 410 

 412, and 441). 



( 32 ) p. 76. "The two Magellanic clouds, Nubecula Major and Minor, are 

 extremely remarkable objects. The greater is a clustering collection of stars, 

 and consists of clusters of irregular form, of globular clusters, and nebulae of 

 various magnitudes and degrees of condensation ; among these there occur 

 large nebulous spaces not resolvable into stars, but which yet are probably 

 star-dust (composed of very minute stars), and which, even in the twenty-feet 

 reflector, appear only as a general illumination of the field of view, and form 

 a bright ground upon \vhich other objects of very remarkable and mysterions 

 characters are scattered. In no other part of the heaven are so many nebulae 

 and clusters of stars crowded together as in this Nubecula. The Nubecula 

 Minor is less striking. It exhibits more nebulous irresolvable light, and the 

 clusters which are scattered over it are fewer in nebulae and less brilliant." 

 (From a letter written by Sir John F. W. Herschel, from Feldhausen at tne' 

 Cape of Good Hope, June 13, 1836.) 



(^ p. 77. I should have introduced the fine expression xP TOS ovpavou 

 (which Hesychius borrowed from some unknown poet), when speaking in an 

 earlier page of the " Garden of the Universe," if xP TOS na ^ not rather sig- 

 nified more generally an enclosed space. The connection with the German 

 Garten, garden, the Gothic gards (derived, according to Jacob Grimm, from 

 gairdvn, cingere, Engl. gird), cannot, however, be mistaken, any more than 

 the affinity to the Slavonian grod, gorod, and, as noticed by Pott in his 

 Etymol. Forsch. Th. i. S. 144, to the Latin cJiors (whence corte, cour, and 

 .the Ossetic khart). We may perceive a further connection with the Northern 

 yard, yerd (enclosure, or place hedged round as a court or as a country seat), 

 and the Persian gerd, gird, circle, district, as applied to a princely country 

 scat, castle, or town, as in ancient names of places, in Firdusi's Shahnameh, 

 Siyawakschgird, Darabgird, &c. 



t 34 ) p. 79. Respecting o Centaun, see Maclear's results in 1839 and 1840, 

 in the Trans, of the Astronomical Society, Vol. xii. p. 370 : probable mean 

 error 0"0640. For 61 Cygni, see Bessel, in Schumacher's Jahrbuch, 1839 



