THE STELLAE SYSTEM. 25 



be calculated or written in numbers, but each consisting of 

 thousands of suns many hundred times greater than this 

 earth, and many millions of miles from each other. What 

 an idea of space does this afford, and how soon do all our 

 narrow notions of possibility and impossibility vanish before 

 such facts accomplished by the hands of God ! 



Amongst the stars composing our system there are certain 

 conspicuous groups or constellations, which were named by 

 the earliest astronomers, and compose a list of the most ridi- 

 culous imaginary figures, as useless to the casual observer of 

 the stars as to the astronomer, and have not the most distant 

 resemblance to the figures after which they are named, as 

 for instance the " Great Bear" (Ursa Major) fig. 24. The 



PIG. 24. 



grouping of stars into constellations serves, however, to 

 find any one required (provided the groups on the chart 

 can be identified with those in the heavens), as for instance 

 the three conspicuous stars forming "Orion's belt" (fig. 25), 

 from w^hich a line produced eastward will point to Sirius, 

 the brightest star in the heavens, and another Kne produced 

 westward will serve to point out " Aldebaran," also a star of 

 the first magnitude, &c. ; also a line drawn from a to b in 

 the Great Bear will nearly point to the pole-star the star 

 situated nearly (although not exactly) at the pole, or that 

 part of the heavens which would be indicated by a line 

 drawn through the earth at its axis of rotation. Amongst 



