My intention is to treat specially of stars and nebulae visible in southern countries, so I have confined myself almost entirely to those of the southern hemisphere, though of course many which are north of the celestial equator can be seen also. My readers will find that the southern hemisphere possesses the most beautiful part of the Milky Way, the two brightest stars in the sky, the finest coloured star-cluster and the largest globular cluster, the brightest double star, the nearest of the stars, and the brightest of the large gaseous nebulae. Let us add that the southern hemisphere has been less studied than the north, and therefore there is an even wider field for amateur workers. Stars of the Southern Skies I THE CONSTELLATIONS OF THE SOUTH: MODERN GROUPS When we speak of the southern constellations, everyone thinks of the Southern Cross, and every traveller coming south for the first time is eager to see it. Some are disappointed because it is small and irregular, but it is very brilliant, and lies in an extremely rich region of the Milky Way. Very beautiful, too, is the way in which it is seen rising on its side and gradually becoming upright as it reaches its greatest height above the horizon, then sloping again as it glides westward. The Cross seems to have been first so named by the Spanish explorer Amerigo Vespucci, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it was also described in letters by the Florentine Andrea Corsali, who says it is so beautiful that in his opinion no other constellation in the sky is worthy to be compared with it. Some think, however, that the stars had already been recognised as forming a Cross as early as the thirteenth century, because Dante in his _Purgatory_ speaks of four stars which glorified the southern sky; but he does not say they were in the form of a cross, and he tells us that they had never been seen before by mortal man except by our first parents, whose original dwelling-place he sets in the southern hemisphere. This negatives the suggestion that some traveller had described them to him. About the same time as the Cross, other groups were named by sailors and travellers in the part of the sky round about the south pole, for this region had been left a blank by the framers of the ancient constellations, doubtless because they lived too far north to see it. Some students of astronomy in the Middle Ages concluded that there really were no stars in this part, and Ristoro of Arezzo gravely argued that this proved the absence of any land further south than India and Ethiopia; for where there are no stars to pour down influences on the earth no animals can live, and therefore no vegetation is needed for their food, and no land for it to grow on.