lobe, moreover, actually revolves upon itself so that we
read the whole in due sequence. Given a clear atmosphere, and a little
stimulus to the will from our love of truth and science, and the
geography of the Heavens, or "uranography," will soon be as familiar to
us as the geography of our terrestrial atom.

On a beautiful summer's night, when we look toward the starry sky, we
are at first aware only of a number of shining specks. The stars seem to
be scattered almost accidentally through Space; they are so numerous and
so close to one another that it would appear rash to attempt to name
them separately. Yet some of the brighter ones particularly attract and
excite our attention. After a little observation we notice a certain
regularity in the arrangement of these distant suns, and take pleasure
in drawing imaginary figures round the celestial groups.

That is what the ancients did from a practical point of view. In order
to guide themselves across the trackless ocean, the earliest Phenician
navigators noted certain fixed bearings in the sky, by which they mapped
out their routes. In this way they discovered the position of the
immovable Pole, and acquired empire over the sea. The Chaldean pastors,
too, the nomad people of the East, invoked the Heavens to assist in
their migrations. They grouped the more brilliant of the stars into
Constellations with simple outlines, and gave to each of these celestial
provinces a name derived from mythology, history, or from the natural
kingdoms. It is impossible to determine the exact epoch of this
primitive celestial geography. The Centaur Chiron, Jason's tutor, was
reputed the first to divide the Heavens upon the sphere of the
Argonauts. But this origin is a little mythical! In the Bible we have
the Prophet Job, who names Orion, the Pleiades, and the Hyades, 3,300
years ago. The Babylonian Tables, and the hieroglyphs of Egypt, witness
to an astronomy that had made considerable advance even in those remote
epochs. Our actual constellations, which are doubtless of Babylonian
origin, appear to have been arranged in their present form by the
learned philosopher Eudoxus of Cnidus, about the year 360 B.C. Aratus
sang of them in a didactic poem toward 270. Hipparchus of Rhodes was the
first to note the astronomical positions with any precision, one hundred
and thirty years before our era. He classified the stars in order of
magnitude, according to their apparent brightness; and his catal