M. Blundevile his exercises containing sixe treatises, the titles wherof are set down in the next printed page: which treatises are verie necessarie to be read and learned of all yoong gentlemen that haue not bene exercised in such disciplines, and yet are desirous to haue knowledge as well in cosmographie, astronomie, and geographie, as also in the arte of navigation ... To the furtherance of which arte of navigation, the said M. Blundevile speciallie wrote the said treatises and of meere good will doth dedicate the same to all the young gentlemen of this realme.

Of the Declination of the fixed starres. Chap. 29.

WHat is the declination of a starre?

The declination is none other thing, but the distance of any fixed starre from the Equinoctiall, eyther Northward or Southward, which is mutable as well as the Longitude: for as the fixed starres do change their Longitudes, so also by lit∣tle and little they decline either more or lesse from the Equinoctiall: As for example, the declination of the starre called Canicula, that is to say the lesser Dogge in the yeare of our Lord, 138. when Ptolomie liued, was 15. degrées 44′· and 38″· towardes the South. But in these dayes the decli∣nation of the said starre is but sixe degrées and 7′· towardes the South, and by reason that the fixed starres in processe of time doe change their Longitude and declination, they are not alwayes vn∣der one selfe signe, but doe flit out of one signe into another.

How is the Longitude, Latitude, and declination of anie starre to be knowne, and how are the starres themselues to be knowne in the firmament.

The Longitude, Latitude, and declination of any starre is to be knowne most truely by the Astronomicall Tables calculated of purpose, and you may know the same also without hauing regard to euery small minute, by helpe of the celestiall Globe, all the ne∣cessarie vses whereof I haue set downe in a little Treatise to be added hereafter to this Booke, and there also I shew you how to find out any starre in the firmament that is described in the globe, in which Globe are set downe as many stars as euer were known, a few excepted towards the South pole, which were founde out but of late dayes, of which starres I shall haue occasion to speake

hereafter in my Treatise of Nauigation. In the meane time I will procéede to the ascention and descention of the starres both right, meane, and oblique.