22 OUR PHYSICAL WORLD 



king, in anger, seized the bear by his short tail and so threw him 

 into the sky, stretching his tail in the process. Hence this bear 

 now has a long tail, an appendage quite foreign to his kind. In 

 the earlier star maps, the bear is figured without a tail, but in 

 later maps both Big and Little Bears possess tails. 



Ursa Major is also figured, especially in England, as a wagon, 

 Charlemagne's cart or Charles's wain, and Bootes is then the 

 wagoner. Since the wagon turns about the polestar like the 

 hand of a clock on a great dial, its position was an index of time 

 to those familiar with it. So Shakespeare makes the Carrier say 

 in Act II, Scene i, of Henry IV: " Heigh-ho! An't be not four 

 by the day, I'll be hanged; Charles' wain is over the new chimney 

 and yet our horses not packed." 



The constellation of the Little Bear was also known to the 

 ancients as "Transmountain," " beyond the mountain," for they 

 believed that the earth rested on the " mountain of the north" and 

 that beyond it the gods had their habitation. This idea is evi- 

 dent in such biblical passages as Isa. 14: 13 and Ps. 48:2. The 

 polestar in Transmountain is probably the most famous single 

 star in the sky. Shakespeare in Act III, Scene i, of Julius 

 Caesar makes Caesar say: 



But I am constant as the northern star, 



Of whose true-fixed and resting quality 



There is no fellow in the firmament. 



The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks; 



They are all fire, and every one doth shine: 



But there's but one in all doth hold his place. 



On the opposite side of the Pole from the Big Dipper is a 

 group of fairly brilliant stars forming an open W or M that readily 

 serves to locate the constellation Cassiopeia (Fig. 9). Together 

 with one rather dim star the letter makes the figure of a chair and 

 is known as Cassiopeia's Chair, and on it the unfortunate queen 

 is seated in the ancient star charts. The other dramatis per- 



