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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
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