t part of the sky.

Antares belongs to a showy constellation called the Scorpion. I cannot
trace all the outline of a spider-like creature, but his poisonous tail
or "stinger" is made by a curved line of stars south and east of
Antares. And you can make a pretty fan by joining Antares to several
stars in a curve which are west of Antares and a little north. There is
an old tale that this Scorpion is the one that stung Orion to death when
he began to "show off" and boast that there was no animal in the world
that could kill him.

Another very bright star in the southern part of the sky is Spica. To
find it, start with the handle of the Dipper, and making the same
backward curve which helped you to find Arcturus, keep on till you come
to the white star Spica--say thirty degrees beyond Arcturus. This is the
brightest star in the constellation called "the Virgin." It is not worth
while trying to trace her among nearly forty faint stars in this
neighbourhood. But she is supposed to be a winged goddess who holds up
in her right hand an _ear of wheat_, and that is what Spica means.

Now for an autumn constellation--the Southern Fish. I don't care if you
fail to outline a fish, but I do want you to see the bright star that is
supposed to be in the fish's mouth. And I don't want you to balk at its
hard name--Fomalhaut (pronounced _fo'-mal-o_). It is worth a lot of
trouble to know it as a friend. To find it, you have to draw an
exceedingly long line two-thirds of the way across the whole sky. Start
with the Pointers. Draw a line through them and the Pole star and keep
clear on until you come to a solitary bright star rather low down in the
south. That is Fomalhaut. It looks lonely and is lonely, even when you
look at it through a telescope.

And now for the last story. Once upon a time the Persians thought there
must be four stars that rule the lives of men. So they picked out one in
the north and one in the south and one in the east and one in the west,
just as if they were looking for four bright stars to mark the points of
the compass. If you want to find them yourself without my help don't
read the next sentence, but shut this book and go out and see. Then
write down on a piece of paper the stars you have selected and compare
them with the list I am about to give. Here are the four royal stars of
the Persians: Fomalhaut for the north, Regulus for the south, Aldebaran
for the east, and Antares for the west.

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