Now,
and from some time certainly preceding that of Eudoxus, one arm has been
lopped off to fashion the northern crown, and the herdsman holds his
club as close to his side as a soldier holds his shouldered musket. The
constellation of the Great Bear, once I conceive the only bear (though
the lesser bear is a very old constellation), has suffered wofully.
Originally it must have been a much larger bear, the stars now forming
the tail marking part of the outline of the back; but first some folks
who were unacquainted with the nature of bears turned the three stars
(the horses of the plough) into a long tail, abstracting from the animal
all the corresponding portion of his body, and then modern astronomers
finding a great vacant space where formerly the bear's large frame
extended, incontinently formed the stars of this space into a new
constellation, the Hunting Dogs. No one can recognise a bear in the
constellation as at present shaped, but any one who looks attentively at
the part of the skies occupied by the constellation will recognise
(always 'making believe a good deal') a monstrous bear, with the proper
small head of creatures of the bear family, and with exceedingly
well-developed plantigrade feet. Of course this figure cannot at all
times be recognised with equal facility; but before midnight during the
last four or five months in the year, the bear occupies positions
favouring his recognition, being either upright on his feet, or as if
descending a slope, or squatting on his great haunches. As a long-tailed
animal the creature is more like one of those wooden toy-monkeys which
used to be made for children, and may be now, in which the sliding
motion of a ringed rod carried the monkey over the top of a stick. The
little bear has I think been borrowed from the dragon, which was
certainly a winged monster originally.

Now the astronomers who separated from each other, and in so doing
spoiled the old constellation-figures, seem to have despaired of freeing
Ophiuchus from his entanglements. The Serpent is twined around his body,
the Scorpion is clawing at one leg. The constellation makers have _per
fas et nefas_ separated Scorpio from the Serpent Holder, spoiling both
figures. But the Serpent has been too much for them, insomuch that they
have been reduced to the abject necessity of leaving one part of the
Serpent on one side of the region they allow to Ophiuchus, and the other
part of the Serpent to the other.