NOTES TO BOOK VII. 317 



has 520 zodiacal stars ; Groombridge's, 4243 circumpolar 

 stars as far as 50 degrees of North Polar distance ; 

 Santini's, a zone 18 degrees North of the equator. Be- 

 sides these, Mr. Taylor has published, by order of the 

 Madras government, a Catalogue of 11000 stars observed 

 by him at Madras; and Rumker, who observed in the 

 Observatory established by Sir Thomas Brisbane at Para- 

 matta, has commenced a Catalogue which is to contain 

 12000. Mr. Baily published two standard Catalogues; 

 that of the Royal Astronomical Society, containing 2881 

 stars ; and that of the British Association, containing 

 8377 stars. I omit other Catalogues, as those of Arge- 

 lander, &c., and Catalogues of Southern Stars. 



Of the Berlin Maps, fourteen hours in Right Ascension 

 have been published : and their value may be judged of 

 by this circumstance, that it was in a great measure by 

 comparing the heavens with these Maps that the new 

 planet Astraea was discovered. The Zone observations 

 made at Konigsberg, by the late illustrious astronomer 

 Bessel, deserve to be mentioned, as embracing a vast 

 number of stars. 



The common mode of designating the stars is founded 

 upon the ancient constellations as given by Ptolemy ; to 

 which Bayer, of Augsburg, in his Uranometria, added the 

 artifice of designating the brightest stars in each constella- 

 tion by the Greek letters, a, /3, 7, &c. applied in order 

 of brightness, and when these were exhausted, the Latin 

 letters. Flamsteed used numbers. As the number of 

 observed stars increased, various methods were employed 

 for designating them ; and the confusion which has been 

 thus introduced, both with regard to the boundaries of the 

 constellations and the nomenclature of the stars in each, 



