The . . . 'as though the tops of the trees were 



Pleiad- encircled by the necklace of the Pleiades ' : or, 

 Month. -, ,, T, 



or our own day, or a verse such as Roscoe 



Thayer's : 



" slowly the Pleiades 

 Dropt like dew from bough to bough of the cinnamon trees," 



or lines such as that familiar but ever beautiful 

 couplet in Locksley Hall : 



" Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow 



shade, 

 Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid." 



As for many of the names, what store of old 

 thought and legend they enshrine. ' Seamen's 

 starres ' our own King Jamie called them, after 

 the popular use. The Finns call them 'the 

 Sieve,' and the Prove^als ' the mosquito net,' 

 and the Italians 'the Battledore.' With the 

 nomad Arabs they are 'the Herd of Camels.' 

 Peoples so apart as the ancient Arabians, the 

 Algerian Berbers of to-day, and the Dyaks 

 of Borneo, have placed in them the seat 

 of immortality. Races as widely severed 

 as the Hebridean Gaels and certain Indian 

 tribes have called them ' the Dancers ' : to the 

 Solomon Islanders they are ' a group of girls,' 

 and (strange, among so primitive and savage 

 a race) the Australian aborigines thought of 

 them as ' Young Girls playing to Young Men 

 274 



