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 regarded these asterisms as unformed stars ( ). The next innovator of moment was Johann Bayer, a German astronomer, who published a Uranometria in 1603, in which twelve constellations, all in the southern hemisphere, were added to Ptolemy’s forty-eight, viz. Apis (or Musca) (Bee), Avis Indica (Bird of Paradise), Chameleon, Dorado (Sword-fish), Grus (Crane), Hydrus (Water-snake), Indus (Indian), Pavo (Peacock), Phoenix, Piscis volans (Flying fish), Toucan, Triangulum australe. According to W. Lynn (Observatory, 1886, p. 255), Bayer adapted this part of his catalogue from the observations of the Dutch navigator Petrus Theodori (or Pieter Dirchsz Keyser), who died in 1596 off Java. The Coelum stellatum Christianum of Julius Schiller (1627) is noteworthy for the attempt made to replace the names connoting mythological and pagan ideas by the names of apostles, saints, popes, bishops, and other dignitaries of the church, &c. Aries became St Peter; Taurus, St Andrew; Andromeda, the Holy Sepulchre; Lyra, the Manger; Canis major, David; and so on. This innovation (with which the introduction of the twelve apostles into the solar zodiac by the Venerable Bede may be compared) was short-lived. According to Charles Hutton [''Math. Dict. i. 328 (1795)] the editions published in 1654 and 1661 had reverted to the Greek names; on the other hand, Camille Flammarion (Popular Astronomy, p. 375) quotes an illuminated folio of 1661, which represents “the sky delivered from pagans and peopled with Christians.” A similar confusion was attempted by E. Weigelius, who sought to introduce a Coelum heraldicum'', in which the constellations were figured as the arms or insignia of European dynasties, and by symbols of commerce.

In Edmund Halley’s southern catalogue (Catalogus stellarum australium), published in 1679 and incorporated in Flamsteed’s Historia coelestis (1725), the following constellations are named:—Piscis australis, Columba Noachi, Argo navis, Robur Caroli, Ara, Corona australis, Grus, Phoenix, Pavo, Apus or Avis Indica, Musca apis, Chameleon, Triangulum australe, Piscis volans, Dorado or Xiphias, Toucan or Anser Americanus, and Hydrus. Flamsteed’s maps also contained Mons Menelai. This list contains nothing new except Robur Caroli, since Columba Noachi (Noah’s dove) had been raised to the skies by Bartschius in 1624. The constellation Robur Caroli and also the star Cor Caroli ( Canum Venaticorum) were named by Halley in honour of Charles II. of England.

In 1690 two posthumous works of Johann Hevelius (1611–1687), the Firmamentum sobiescianum and Prodromus astronomiae, added several new constellations to the list, viz. Canes venatici (the Greyhounds), Lacerta (the Lizard), Leo minor (Little Lion), Lynx, Sextans Uraniae, Scutum or Clypeus Sobieskii (the shield of Sobieski), Vulpecula et Anser (Fox and Goose), Cerberus, Camelopardus (Giraffe), and Monoceros (Unicorn); the last two were originally due to Jacobus Bartschius. In 1679 Augustine Royer introduced the most interesting of the constellations of the southern hemisphere, the Crux australis or Southern Cross. He also suggested Nubes major, Nubes minor, and Lilium, and re-named Canes venatici the river