d to the two; it occupied the very crown of the heavens. With
the single exception of the Little Bear, which it nearly surrounds, the
Dragon was the only constellation that never set. Next, the Water-snake
(see diagram, p. 200) lay at this time right along the equator,
extending over 105 deg. of Right Ascension; or, to put it less technically,
it took seven hours out of the twenty-four to cross the meridian. It
covered nearly one-third of the equatorial belt. Thirdly, the
intersection of the equator with one of the principal meridians of the
sky was marked by the Serpent, which is carried by the Serpent-holder
in a very peculiar manner. The meridian at midnight at the time of the
spring equinox is called a "colure,"--the "autumnal colure," because the
sun crosses it in autumn. Now the Serpent was so arranged as to be shown
writhing itself for some distance along the equator, and then struggling
upwards, along the autumnal colure, marking the zenith with its head.
The lower part of the autumnal colure was marked by the Scorpion, and
the foot of the Serpent-holder pressed down the creature's head, just
where the colure, the equator, and the ecliptic intersected (_see_
diagram, p. 164).

It is scarcely conceivable that this fourfold arrangement, not suggested
by any natural grouping of the stars, should have come about by
accident; it must have been intentional. For some reason, the equator,
the colure, the zenith and the poles were all marked out by these
serpentine or draconic forms. The unmapped space gives us a clue only to
the date and latitude of the designing of the most southerly
constellations. We now see that a number of the northern hold positions
which were specially significant under the same conditions, indicating
that they were designed at about the same date. There is therefore
little room for doubt that some time in the earlier half of the third
millennium before our era, and somewhere between the 36th and 40th
parallels of north latitude, the constellations were designed,
substantially as we have them now, the serpent forms being intentionally
placed in these positions of great astronomical importance.

It will have been noticed that Ptolemy makes the Ram the first
constellation of the zodiac. It was so in his days, but it was the Bull
that was the original leader, as we know from a variety of traditions;
the sun at the spring equinox being in the centre of that constellation
about 3000 B.C. At the time