60 COSMOS. 



16th magnitude in this space. These stars are projected on 

 the wholly unresolved, uniformly bright and unspeckled neb- 

 ula.=^ 



The Black Specks which attracted the attention of Portu- 

 guese and Spanish pilots as early as the close of the fifteenth 

 and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, circle round the 

 southern pole opposite to the Magellanic Light-clouds, al- 

 though at a greater distance from it. They are probably, as 

 already remarked, the Ca7iopo fosco of the "three Canopi," 

 described by Amerigo Vespucci in his third voyage. I find 

 the first definite notice of these spots in the first Decade of 

 Anghiera's work, ''De Rebus Oceanicis"" (Dec. i., lib. 9, ed. 

 1533, p. 20, b). "Interrogati a me nautas qui Vicentium Ag- 

 nem Pinzonum fuerant comitati (1499), an antarcticum vide- 

 rint polum : stellam se nullam huic Arcticse similem, quso 

 discerni circa punctum (polum ?) possit, cognovisse inquiunt. 

 Stellarum tamen aliam, ajunt, se prospexisse faciem den- 

 samque quandam ab horizonte vaporosam caliginem, qusB 

 oculos fere obtenebraret."! The word Stella is used here for 

 a celestial constellation, and the narrators may not have ex- 

 plained themselves very distinctly in reference to a caligo 

 which obscured their sight. Father Joseph Acosta, of Me- 

 dina del Campo, gives a more satisfactory account of the 

 Black Specks and the cause of this phenomenon. He com- 

 pares them, in his Historia Natural de las Indias (lib. i., 

 cap. 2), to the echpsed portion of the Moon's disk in respect 

 to color and form. " As the Milky "Way," he says, "is more 

 brilliant because it is composed of denser celestial matter, and 

 hence gives forth more light, so likewise the Black Specks, 

 which are not visible in Europe, are entirely devoid of light, 

 because they constitute a portion of the heavens which is 

 barren, i. e., composed of very attenuated and transparent 

 matter." The error of a distinguished astronomer in sup- 

 posing that this description referred to the spots of the Sun, J 

 seems scarcely less singular than that the missionary Richaud 



* See Observ. at the Cape, § 20-23 and 133, the beautiful drawing, pi. 

 ii., fig. 4, and a special map of the graphical analysis.— PL x., as well 

 as Outlines, $ 896, pi. v., fig. 1. 



t " I asked some mariners who had accompanied Vicentius Agnes 

 Pinzo (1499) whether they saw the antarctic pole, and they told me 

 that they did not observe any star like our North Star, which may be 

 Been about the arctic pole, but that they noticed stars in another forna, 

 having the appearance of a dense and dark vapor rising frcxn the hori- 

 «on, which almost obscured their vision. 



X Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 287, and note. 



