ARGITHAMNIA, a genus of plants, of the class Aloncecia, and order Triandria. See BOTANY. (so) ARGO NAYIS, in ASTRONOMY, the ship Argo, a con stellation in the southern hemisphere : in the catalogue of De La Caille it contains 258 stars.
That the shift on the sphere relates to something else than the Argonautie expedition of the Greeks, appears from the following reasons. Pagasx, or Pegasx, in Thessaly, from whence the Argonauts are said to have sailed, is in 39°, and Colehis, (to which they were sail ing,) is in 45° north latitude : the star Canopus of the first magnitude, marked co by Bayer, in the constella tion Argo, is only 37° from the south pole ; conse quently this principal star, and great part of the con stellation Argo, could not be seen by the Argonauts, either in the place from which they set out, or in that to which they were sailing. If Chiron, then, as the Greeks affirm, formed the sphere, for the use of the Argonauts, is it likely that he would have given the name of Argo to a collection of stars, most of which were invisible to the Argonauts ? In fact, this circum stance is sufficient to destroy the pretensions of the Greeks to the honour of having formed the sphere ; for they never would have placed such a prominent object in their history as the ship Argo, in a situation in the heavens, where but a small part of it could be observed by the inhabitants of Greece. The most probable opi
nion is, that the Greeks found the constellation of the ship designed on some ancient sphere, probably of Egyptian construction, and that they immediately ap propriated it, as they did the mythology of other nations, to their own fabulous history. See ARCHIMEDES. (g)