OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 667 



seems singular, that since the figure of this constellation is so 

 striking, and is so remarkably well defined and individualized, 

 in the same way as those of the Greater and Lesser Bear, the 

 Scorpion, Cassiopea, the Eagle, and the Dolphin, these four 

 stars of the Southern Cross should not have been earlier sepa- 

 rated from the large ancient constellation of the Centaur ; and 

 this is so much the more remarkable, since the Persian 

 Kazwini, and other Mahomedan astronomers, took pains to 

 discover crosses in the Dolphin and the Dragon. Whether 

 the courtly flattery of the Alexandrian literati, who converted 

 Canopus into a Ptolemccon likewise included the stars of 

 our Southern Cross, for the glorification of Augustus, in a 

 Ccesaris thronon, never visible in Italy, is a question that can- 

 not now be very readily answered.f At the time of Claudius 

 Ptolemaeus, the beautiful star at the base of the Southern 

 Cross had still an altitude of 6 10' at its meridian passage 

 at Alexandria, whilst in the present day it culminates there 

 several degrees below the horizon. In order at this time 

 (1847) to see a Crucis at an altitude of 6 10', it is neces- 

 sary, taking the refraction into account, to be ten degrees 

 south of Alexandria, in the parallel of 21 43' north latitude. 

 In the fourth century the Christian anchorites in the Thebaid 

 desert might have seen the Cross at an altitude of ten degrees. 

 I doubt, however, whether its designation is due to them, for 

 Dante, in the celebrated passage of the Purgatorio : 



lo mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente 

 All'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle 

 Non viste mai fuor ch' alia prima gente ; 



and Amerigo Vespucci, who, at the aspect of the starry skies 

 of the south, first called to mind this passage on his third 

 voyage, and even boasted that he now " looked on the four 

 stars never seen till then by any save the first human pair," 

 were both unacquainted with the denomination of the Southern 

 Cross. Amerigo simply observes, that the four stars form a 

 rhomboidal figure (ima mandorla), and this remark was made 

 in the year 1501. The more frequently the maritime expe- 

 ditions on the routes opened by Gama and Magellan, round 

 the Cape of Good Hope and through the Pacific, were multi- 



Ursprung der Sternnamen, s. xlix. 263 und 277; also my Examen 

 crit., t. iv. pp. 319-324; t. v. pp. 17-19, 30 and 230-234. 

 f Plin. ii. 70; Ideler, Sternnamcn, s. 260 und 295. 



