158 
NATURE STUDY. 
tent that they complained to Neptune, the ruler of the sea, 
of the insult. To punish her for her insolence, Neptune 
sent a frightful monster to ravage her coast. But this did 
not suffice to appease their anger or mollify their jealousy 
so they demanded, and it was finally decreed, that the 
Queen should have her daughter Andromeda chained to a 
desert rock on the beach and leave her exposed to the fury 
and ravages of this monster. Her lover, Perseus, having 
been made aware of her fate, rescued her just as the mon¬ 
ster was advancing to devour her. 
“Rear to his wife and daughter see, aloft where Cepheus shines, 
* That wife, the Little Bear and Swan, with Draco hound his lines; 
Beneath the Pole-star twelve degrees, two stars your eye will meet— 
Gamma, the nomad shepherds ’gem, and Kappa mark his feet. 
Alphirk, the Hindu’s Kalpeny, points out the monarch’s waist; 
While Alderamin, beaming bright, is on the shoulder placed; 
And where, o’er regions rich and vast, the Milky Way is led, 
Three stars, of magnitude the fourth, adorn the iEthiop’s head.” 
ket the observer now direct his gaze to the right of the 
kittle Dipper, and he can see, about half way between the 
brightest star in its bowl and the star in the angle of the 
handle of the Great Dipper, a star of about the fourth mag¬ 
nitude. From this it is easy to trace a line of lesser stars 
curving upward and at the left terminating at Camelopard- 
alus, and also downward to the left reaching to Cepheus, 
then curving again downward and to the right reaching the 
horizon exactly in the north, on the boundary line of Her¬ 
cules. This is the distinguishing group of the constellation 
Draco, the Dragon, the lower terminus forming the head, 
and the upper one, the tail. On picture charts his long 
and tortuous body is represented as having several folds, 
corresponding to the newspaper representations of the mod¬ 
ern myth, the sea serpent. 
The star first pointed out is named Thuban, and is inter¬ 
esting from the fact that between 4000 and 5000 years ago 
this was the pole star. It was then much nearer the pole 
than Polaris now is. By mariners this star is called the 
Dragon’s Tail, and was formerly regarded as of great im- 
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