Winter us, that it is receding from our system at an 

 Stars. a n but unparalleled velocity, a backward flight 

 into the unknown at the rate of thirty miles a 

 second. 



It would be hopeless to attempt here even 

 the briefest account of the primitive and diverse 

 nomenclature, the mythology, the folklore of 

 Orion . . . the Winter-Bringer, as this con- 

 stellation is called in an old Scandinavian saga, 

 identical thus with the marginal reading in the 

 Geneva Bible relative to the reference to 

 Orion in Job — ' which starre bringeth in 

 winter,' an allusion to its evening appearance 

 at the season of cold and storms. For these 

 things are writ in the records of a hundred 

 nations. They are alive in the poetry of all 

 peoples. Centuries before our era, when 

 Thebes was the greatest city of Greece, the 

 poetess Corinna sang of this great Warrior, 

 the Great Hunter, whose nightly course was 

 so glorious above the dusky lands and waters 

 of Hellas. Long after Pindar and the Greek 

 poets, Catullus and Horace gave it a like pre- 

 eminence in Latin literature. In our own 

 poetry, many surely will recall from Paradise 

 Lost : 



"... when with fierce winds Orion arm'd 

 Hath vext the Red-sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 

 Busiris and his Memphian chivalry . . ." 



306 



