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SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
one or two others, will bite in self-defence, but they have 
no poison fangs, and the bite is much like the prick of 
a bramble. 
THE STARS AS THE CAMPER SEES THEM 
(See Plate of Stars and Principal Constellations) 
So far as there is a central point in our heavens, that 
point is the Pole-star, Polaris. Around this star all the 
stars in the sky seem to turn once in twenty-four hours. 
It is easily discovered by the help of the Big Dipper, 
a part of the Great Bear, known to every country boy and 
girl in the northern half of the world. This is, perhaps, the 
most important star group in our sky, because of its size, 
peculiar form, the fact that it never sets in our latitude, 
and that of its stars, two, sometimes called the Pointers 
always point out the Pole Star. It is called the Dipper 
because it is shaped like a dipper with a long, bent handle. 
Why ( the whole group ) is called the Great Bear is not 
so easy to explain. The classical legend has it that the 
nymph, Calisto, having violated her vow, was changed by 
Diana into a bear, which, after death, was immortalized 
in the sky by Zeus. Another suggestion is that the earliest 
astronomers, the Chaldeans, called these stars “the shin- 
ing ones/ 5 and their word happened to be very like the 
Greek arktos (a bear) Another explanation is that ves- 
sels in olden days were named for animals, etc. They 
bore at the prow the carved effigy of the namesake, and 
if the Great Bear, for example, made several very happy 
voyages by setting out when a certain constellation was 
in the ascendant, that constellation might become known 
as the Great Bear’s constellation. Certainly, there is 
nothing in its shape to justify the name. Very few of 
the constellations indeed are like the thing they are called 
after. Their names were usually given for some 
