36 
THE' GUIDE TO NATURE 
Any other drawing than a bear includ- 
ing the stars would fit the arrangement 
of the stars as well. Yet these names 
have been applied to these groups of 
stars from the ancient times to the 
present. In earlier times stars were 
often spoken of as stars in certain parts 
gard them, except for briefly naming 
remarkable stars as Alpha Leonis, Beta 
Scorpii, etc., by letters of the Greek 
alphabet attached to them. 
“The constellations seem to have 
been almost purposely named and de- 
lineated to cause as much confusion and 
of the figure, thus Aldebaran was the 
eye of Taurus (the bull) and Betelgeux 
was in the shoulder of Orion. This 
method of designating the position of 
stars has long since passed from com- 
mon use. 
Sir John Herschel has aptly de- 
scribed constellations as “uncouth fig- 
ures and outlines of men and monsters 
which serve in a rude and barbarous 
way to enable us to talk of groups of 
stars, or districts in the heavens, by 
names which, though absurd and 
puerile in their origin, have obtained a 
currency from which it would be diffi- 
cult to dislodge them. In so far as they 
have really (and some have) any slight 
resemblance to the figures called up in 
the imagination by a view of the more 
splendid ‘constellations’ they have a 
certain convenience ; but as they are 
otherwise entirely arbitrary, and corre- 
spond to no natural subdivisions or 
groupings of the stars, astronomers 
treat them lightly or altogether disre- 
inconvenience as possible. Innumerable 
snakes twine through long and con- 
torted areas of the heavens, where no 
memory can follow them ; bears, lions 
and fishes, large and small, northern 
and southern, confuse all nomenclature, 
etc. A better system of constellations 
might have been a material help as an 
artificial memory.” 
Popular opinion has long since de- 
manded groupings and names which 
are of real assistance in locating and 
identifying the stars. In a few cases the 
old arrangements are sufficiently ap- 
propriate. In our map this might be 
said of Draco (the dragon), Corona 
(the crown), Sagitta (the arrow) and 
Scorpio (the scorpion), assuming that 
the long tail is in view, and Serpens 
(the serpent). On the other hand popu- 
lar usage replaces Ursa Major and Ursa 
Minor, the greater and lesser bears, by 
the names, the big and little dippers, be- 
cause the stars are arranged in the form 
of dippers and not in the form of bears. 
