of the Big Dipper are called the Pointers," because they point to the North Star. When we have found the North Star, we have also found the Lesser Bear, because the North Star is the most important star in this group. The Lesser Bear is like the Great Bear in shape, but is smaller. It is sometimes called the Little Dipper. The North Star is the end star of the Lesser Bear's tail, and the end of the dipper handle; and the four stars of the bowl are in his body. The North Star itself is frequently called Polaris, because a line passed through the earth's poles, and extended into the sky, would come very near it.

Within the last few years it has been discovered that Polaris is whirling very rapidly around a dark companion, and that both together are coming towards us at a tremendous speed. How this is known you can read in "Astronomy Through the Ages," which comes later in this book.

With a knowledge of where the Little and Big Dipper are, and by the aid of the charts, you can easily find all the other constellations in their due times and sea

sons.

URSA MAJOR

Scholar:

I marvel why (seeing she hath the form of a beare) her tail should be so long.

Master:

Imagine that Jupiter, fearing to come too nigh unto her teeth, layde holde on her tayle, and thereby drewe her up into the heavens; so that she of herself being very weightie, and the distance from the earth to the heavens

very great, there was great likelihood that her taile must stretch. Other reason have I none.

-THOMAS HOOD.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR

THE sad and solemn night

Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;

The glorious host of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; All through her silent watches, gliding slow, Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they :
Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,

Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.

Alone, in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,

Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;

There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls

Alike, beneath thine eye,

The deeds of darkness and of light are done;

High toward the starlit sky

Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun,

The night storm on a thousand hills is loud,

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thy unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,

Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;

And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,

That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

THE WINGED HORSE

PEGASUS

The Bears can be seen every night in the year and all night long. Not so, with most of the constellations. As the earth changes its place in the course of the year, some of them sink out of sight, not to be seen again for months. Each season has its own constellations. All through the autumn, the one called Pegasus, the wonderful Winged Horse, can be seen flying across the sky. He commences these flights early in September, and the last we see of him is in mid-winter, when he flies down in the west after the setting sun.