APPENDIX. XX.XI cure ; and the lungs of the musician must have been formed of no ordinary materials.

The heavenly bodies (continues our author) were observed by sai- Steering by fixed lors on a twofold account ; being of use to them in prognosticating the seasons, and as guides to direct their course. The chief stars observed which were the in foretelling the weather were Arcturus, the Dog-star, Arse, Orion, ® ° . served by the an-Hyades, Hsedi, Castor and Pollux, Helena, &c. It was likewise cients.

customary to take notice of various omens offered by sea-fowl, fishes. Reliance upon and divers other things, as the murmuring of the floods, the shaking and buzzing noise of trees in the neighbouring woods, the dashing of the billows against the shore, and many more, in all which good pilots were nicely skilled. As to the direction in their voyage, the first practitioners in the art of navigation, being unacquainted with the rest of the celestial motions, steered all the day by the course of the sun, betaking themselves at night to some safe harbour, or Exclusive course making fast their vessel to, and sleeping on, shore ; not daring to venture to sea till their guide had risen to discover the way ; that times.

this was their constant custom, may be observed from the ancient descriptions of those times, whereof, says Potter, I shall only give the following instance : Sol ruit interea, et montes umbrantur opaci, Sternimur optatae gremio telluris ad undam, Sortiti remos, passimque in littore sicco Corpora curamus, fessos sopor irrigat artus. — Mneid, iii. v. 50S.

Afterwards the Phoenicians, who some will have to be the first inventors of navigation, discovered the motions of other stars, as may be observed in Pliny (lib. vii.), and Propertius (lib. ii. v. 990). We find the Phoenicians to have been directed by Cynosura, or the Lesser Bear (which was first observed, in the opinion of some, by Thales the Milesian) ; when the mariners of Greece, as well as of other nations, steered by the Greater Bear, called Helice. For the first observation of this they were obliged to Nauplius, if we may believe Theon ; or, according to the report of Flaccus (Argonaut 1), to Tiphys, the pilot of the celebrated Argo. But of these two, we are told by Theon,