the names of
men and beasts and gods. Some resemblance to terrestrial things, it is
true, everyone can behold in the heavens. Corona, for example, is like a
crown, or, as the Australian black fellows know, it is like a boomerang,
and we can understand why they give it the name of that curious curved
missile. The Milky Way, again, does resemble a path in the sky; our
English ancestors called it Watling Street--the path of the Watlings,
mythical giants--and Bushmen in Africa and Red Men in North America name
it the 'ashen path,' or 'the path of souls.' The ashes of the path, of
course, are supposed to be hot and glowing, not dead and black like the
ash-paths of modern running-grounds. Other and more recent names for
certain constellations are also intelligible. In Homer's time the Greeks
had two names for the Great Bear; they called it the Bear, or the Wain:
and a certain fanciful likeness to a wain may be made out, though no
resemblance to a bear is manifest. In the United States the same
constellation is popularly styled the Dipper, and every one may observe
the likeness to a dipper or toddy-ladle.

But these resemblances take us only a little way towards appellations. We
know that we derive many of the names straight from the Greek; but whence
did the Greeks get them? Some, it is said, from the Chaldaeans; but
whence did they reach the Chaldaeans? To this we shall return later,
but, as to early Greek star-lore, Goguet, the author of 'L'Origine des
Lois,' a rather learned but too speculative work of the last century,
makes the following characteristic remarks: 'The Greeks received their
astronomy from Prometheus. This prince, as far as history teaches us,
made his observations on Mount Caucasus.' That was the eighteenth
century's method of interpreting mythology. The myth preserved in the
'Prometheus Bound' of AEschylus tells us that Zeus crucified the Titan on
Mount Caucasus. The French philosopher, rejecting the supernatural
elements of the tale, makes up his mind that Prometheus was a prince of a
scientific bent, and that he established his observatory on the frosty
Caucasus. But, even admitting this, why did Prometheus give the stars
animal names? Goguet easily explains this by a hypothetical account of
the manners of primitive men. 'The earliest peoples,' he says, 'must
have used writing for purposes of astronomical science. They would be
content to design the constellations of which they wished to