COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

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, Cassiopca, the Eagle, and the Dolphin,
these four
stars of the Southern Cross should not have been earlier separated
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
into a Ptolcmccon likewise included the stars of
Canopus
our Southern Cross, for the glorification of Augustus, in a
Ccesaris throncm, never visible in Italy,
is a question that cannot
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 it present day 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 stariy skies
of the south, first called to mind this passage 011 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 (una mandorla), and this remark was made
in the year 1501. The more frequently the maritime cxpeditions
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, Rternnamcn, s. 260 und 295.