Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/198

138 and camels also figure in the picture. These animals are all in the neighbourhood of Cepheus.

It is useless of course for us to try to see this picture as it appeared to those night watchers of the far East. Situated in an ideal region for star-gazing as regards climatic conditions, in a land where the nights were glorious with stars and where the people spent most of the nocturnal hours on the house tops or out on the hills, gifted with a wonderfully fertile imagination, it was but natural that they should adore the stars, the mystery of which appealed to their superstitious natures, and exalt their heroes to the starry skies. As they were deeply interested in the care of herds and flocks we naturally find that certain star groups represented to them pastoral scenes. These stellar pictures of the ancients are interesting as showing the changes wrought by the advance of progress and civilisation, and there must indeed have been a fascination in painting pictures on the widespread canvas of the night with a brush steeped in the bright-hued pigments of imagination.

Smyth alluded to the constellation Cepheus as "the Dog," and a ring of stars in this group was known to the Arabs as "a Pot."

Dr. Seiss claimed that Capheus represented the coming of the Redeemer as King, while Cæsius and Julius Schiller wished to substitute King Solomon and Saint Stephen for the time-honoured personage.

The Cepheid meteor shower of the 28th of June radiates from a point near γ Cephei, and the star μ Cephei is worth observing as being Sir William Herschel's celebrated "Garnet Star," one of the reddest stars in the sky, and a fine object in an opera-glass.

Surrounding the stars δ, ε, ζ, and λ Cephei, which mark the head of the King, is a vacant gap in the Milky Way, one of the so-called "Coal Sacks," where no stars have been observed even in our most powerful telescopes.

Cepheus furnishes a good example of the fact that it is