en only
from places far south of Chaldaea, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and
indeed of all the regions to which the invention of astronomy has been
assigned. Whatever the first astronomers were, however profound their
knowledge of astronomy may have been (as some imagine), they had
certainly not travelled far enough towards the south to know the
constellations around the southern pole. If they had been as well
acquainted with geography as some assert, if even any astronomer had
travelled as far south as the equator, we should certainly have had
pictured in the old star charts some constellations in that region of
the heavens wherein modern astronomers have placed the Octant, the Bird
of Paradise, the Sword-fish, the Flying-fish, Toucan, the Net, and other
uncelestial objects.

In passing I may note that this fact disposes most completely of a
theory lately advanced that the constellations were invented in the
southern hemisphere, and that thus is to be explained the ancient
tradition that the sun and stars have changed their courses. For though
all the northern constellations would have been more or less visible
from parts of the southern hemisphere near the equator, it is absurd to
suppose that a southern observer would leave untenanted a full fourth of
the heavens round the southern or visible pole, while carefully filling
up the space around the northern or unseen pole with incomplete
constellations whose northern unknown portions would include that pole.
Supposing it for a moment to be true, as a modern advocate of the
southern theory remarks, that 'one of the race migrating from one side
to the other of the equator would take his position from the sun, and
fancy he was facing the same way when he looked at it at noon, and so
would think the motion of the stars to have altered instead of his
having turned round,' the theory that astronomy was brought to us from
south of the equator cannot possibly be admitted in presence of that
enormous vacant region around the southern pole. I think, however, that,
apart from this, a race so profoundly ignorant as to suppose any such
thing, to imagine they were looking north when in reality they were
looking south, can hardly be regarded as the first founders of the
science of astronomy.

The great gap I have spoken of has long been recognised. But one
remarkable feature in its position has not, to the best of my
remembrance, been considered--the vacant space is eccentric with re