ogue,
preserved in the Almagest of Ptolemy, contains 1,122 stars distributed
into forty-eight Constellations.

The figures of the constellations, taken almost entirely from fable, are
visible only to the eyes of the imagination, and where the ancients
placed such and such a person or animal, we may see, with a little
good-will, anything we choose to fancy. There is nothing real about
these figures. And yet it is indispensable to be able to recognize the
constellations in order to find our way among the innumerable army of
the stars, and we shall commence this study with the description of the
most popular and best known of them all, the one that circles every
night through our Northern Heavens. Needless to name it; it is familiar
to every one. You have already exclaimed--the Great Bear!

This vast and splendid association of suns, which is also known as the
Chariot of David, the Plow or Charles's Wain, and the Dipper, is one of
the finest constellations in the Heavens, and one of the oldest--seeing
that the Chinese hailed it as the divinity of the North, over three
thousand years ago.

If any of my readers should happen to forget its position in the sky,
the following is a very simple expedient for finding it. Turn to the
North--that is, opposite to the point where the sun is to be found at
midday. Whatever the season of the year, day of the month, or hour of
the night, you will always see, high up in the firmament, seven
magnificent stars, arranged in a quadrilateral, followed by a tail, or
handle, of three stars. This magnificent constellation never sinks below
our horizon. Night and day it watches above us, turning in twenty-four
hours round a very famous star that we shall shortly become acquainted
with. In the figure of the Great Bear, the four stars of the
quadrilateral are found in the body, and the three at the extremity make
the tail. As David's Chariot, the four stars represent the wheels, and
the three others the horses.

Sometimes our ancestors called them the Seven Oxen, the "oxen of the
celestial pastures," from which the word septentrion (_septem triones_,
seven oxen of labor) is derived. Some see a Plowshare; others more
familiarly call this figure the Dipper. As it rotates round the pole,
its outline varies with the different positions.

It is not easy to guess why this constellation should have been called
the Bear. Yet the name has had a certain influence. From the Greek word
_arctos_ (bear) has