and
strychnine tablets.

Harmless Snakes

Far the greatest number of our snakes are harmless, beautiful, and
beneficient. They are friendly to the farmer, because, although some
destroy a few birds, chickens, ducklings, and game, the largest part of
their food is mice and insects. The Blacksnake, the Milk Snake, and one
or two others, will bite in self-defence, but they have no poison fangs,
and the bite is much like the prick of a bramble.

THE STARS AS THE CAMPER SEES THEM

(See Plate of Stars and Principal Constellations)

So far as there is a central point in our heavens, that point is the
pole-star, Polaris. Around this star all the stars in the sky seem to
turn once in twenty-four hours.

It is easily discovered by the help of the Big Dipper, _a part of the_
Great Bear, known to every country boy and girl in the northern half of
the world. This is, perhaps, the most important star group in our sky,
because of its size, peculiar form, the fact that it never sets in our
latitude, and that of its stars, two, sometimes called the Pointers
always point out the Pole Star. It is called the Dipper because it is
shaped like a dipper with a long, bent handle.

Why (_the whole group_) is called the Great Bear is not so easy to
explain. The classical legend has it that the nymph, Calisto, having
violated her vow, was changed by Diana into a bear, which, after death,
was immortalized in the sky by Zeus. Another suggestion is that the
earliest astronomers, the Chaldeans, called these stars "the shining
ones," and their word happened to be very like the Greek _arktos_ (a
bear). Another explanation is that vessels in olden days were named for
animals, etc. They bore at the prow the carved effigy of the namesake,
and if the Great Bear, for example, made several very happy voyages by
setting out when a certain constellation was in the ascendant, that
constellation might become known as the Great Bear's constellation.
Certainly, there is nothing in its shape to justify the name. Very few
of the constellations indeed are like the thing they are called after.
Their names were usually given for some fanciful association with the
namesake, rather than for resemblance to it.

[Illustration]

The pole-star is really the most important of the stars in our sky; it
marks the north at all times; all the other stars seem to swing around
it once in twenty-four hours. It is the end of the Little Bear's tail;
this constellation i