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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Pleiades. 



savages inhabiting Australia and the Pacific island groups a similar 

 rite has been discovered. It has also been suggested that the Japanese 

 feast of lanterns is not improbably related to this world-wide ob- 

 servance of the Pleiades, as commemorating some calamitous event in 



the far past which in- 

 volved the whole race 

 of man in its effects. 



The Pleiades also 

 Iiave a supposed connec- 

 tion with that mystery 

 of mysteries, the great 

 I*yramid of Cheops. It 

 has been found that 

 about the year 2170 

 15. c, when the begin- 

 ning of spring coincided 

 with the culmination of 

 the Pleiades at raid- 

 night, that wonderful 

 group of stars was visi- 

 ble, just at midnight, 

 through the mysterious 

 southward-pointing passage of the Pyramid. At the same date the 

 then pole-star. Alpha Draconis, was visible through the northward- 

 pointing passage of the Pyramid. 



Another curious myth involving the Pleiades as a part of the con- 

 stellation Taurus is that which represents this constellation as the Bull 

 into which Jupiter changed himself when he carried the fair Europa 

 away from Phtenicia to the continent that now bears her name. In 

 this story the fact that only the head and fore-quarters of the Bull are 

 visible in the sky is accounted for on the ground that the remainder 

 of his body is beneath the water through which he is swimming. 

 Here, then, is another apparent link with the legends of the Flood, with 

 which the Pleiades have been so strangely connected, as by common 

 consent among so many nations, and in the most widely-separated 

 parts of the earth. 



With the most powerful field-glass you may be able to see all of 

 the stars represented in our picture of the Pleiades. With an ordi- 

 nary opera-glass the fainter ones will not be visible ; yet even with 

 such a glass the scene is a remarkable one. Not only all of the 

 "Seven Sisters," but many other stars can be seen twinkling among 

 them. The superiority of Alcyone to the others, which is not so clear 

 to the naked eye, becomes very apparent. Alcyone is the large star 

 below the middle of the picture with a triangle of little stars beside 

 it. To the left or east of Alcyone the two most conspicuous stars are 

 Atlas and Pleione. The latter — which is the uppermost one — is rep- 



