OF THE COSMOS. GROUPING OF THE FIXED STARS. 101 



examined languages of what are called savage nations testify) 

 single out particular, and almost everywhere the same, groups, 

 in which bright stars attract the eye, either by their proxi- 

 mity to each other, by peculiarities in their arrangement and 

 relative position, or by a certain degree of isolation. Such 

 groups awaken obscurely the idea of a relation of parts to 

 each other; and, each being regarded as a whole, receive par- 

 ticular names, differing in different tribes, and most often 

 taken from organic beings with which imagination peoples 

 the silent regions of space. Thus there were early distin- 

 guished the Pleiades (called by some the brood of chickens), 

 the seven star's of the Great Bear or Wain (the lesser Bear 

 or Wain was remarked later, and only on account of the re- 

 petition of the form), Orion's Belt (Jacob's Staff), Cassiopeia/, 

 the constellations of the Swan, the Scorpion, the Southern 

 Cross (on account of the striking change of direction before 

 and after culmination), the Southern Crown, the Eeet of the 

 Centaur (as it were the Twins of the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere), &c. 



Where steppes, grassy prairies, or sandy deserts, present a 

 wide horizon, the rising and setting of the constellations, 

 varying with the seasons of the year, and associated thereby 

 with the requirements of pastoral and agricultural life, become 

 the subject of diligent attention, and are also gradually 

 connected with symbolical combinations of ideas. Contem- 

 plative, not measuring, astronomy then begins to be more 

 developed. Besides the diurnal movement common to all 

 heavenly bodies from morning to evening, it is soon per- 

 ceived that the sun has a movement of its own, much slower, 

 and in the opposite direction. The stars which, when night 

 comes on, are seen high in the evening sky, sink daily more 



