s sometimes called the Little Dipper. But the
Pole-star or Polaris, is not a very bright one, and it would be hard to
identify but for the help of the Pointers of the Big Dipper.

The outside stars (Alpha and Beta) of the Dipper point nearly to
Polaris, at a distance equal to five times the space that separates
these two stars of the Dipper's outer side.

Indian names for the Pole-star are the "Home Star," and "The Star That
Never Moves," and the Big Dipper they call the "Broken Back."

The great Bear is also to be remembered as the hour-hand of the
woodman's clock. It goes once around the North Star in about twenty-four
hours, the same way as the sun, and for the same reason--that it is the
earth that is going and leaving them behind.

The time in going around is not exactly twenty-four hours, so that the
position of the Pointers varies with the seasons, but, as a rule, this
for woodcraft purposes is near enough. The bowl of the Dipper swings
four-fifths of the width of its own opening in one hour. If it went a
quarter of the circle, that would mean you had slept a quarter of a day,
or six hours.

Every fifteen days the stars seem to be an hour earlier: in three months
they gain one-fourth of the circle, and in a year gain the whole circle.

According to Flammarion, there are about seven thousand stars visible to
the naked eye, and of these twenty are stars of the first magnitude.
Fourteen of them are visible in the latitude of New York, the others
(those starred) belong to the South Polar region of the sky. The
following table of the brightest stars is taken from the Revised Harvard
Photometry of 1908, the best authority on the subject.

THE FIRST TWENTY STARS IN ORDER OF BRIGHTNESS

1. Sirius, the Dog Star.
2. *Canopus, of the Ship.
3. *Alpha, of the Centaur.
4. Vega, of the Lyre.
5. Capella, of the Charioteer.
6. Arcturus, of the Herdsman.
7. Rigel, of Orion.
8. Procyon, the Little Dog-Star.
9. *Achernar, of Eridanus.
10. *Beta, of the Centaur.
11. Altair, of the Eagle.
12. Betelgeuze, of Orion's right shoulder.
13. *Alpha of the Southern Cross.
14. Aldebaran, of the Bull's right eye.
15. Pollux, of the Twins.
16. Spica, of the Virgin.
17. Antares, of the Scorpion.
18. Fomalhaut, of the Southern Fish.
19. Deneb,