Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/472

350 of the South the four quarters of the heavens marked out as being under the dominion of the Lord. In the ninth chapter they are given in this order: The Bear which is in the north, Orion in its acronical rising with the sun setting in the west, the Pleiades in their heliacal rising with the sun rising in the east, and the Chambers of the South." In the Breeches Bible the note on the word "Arcturus" reads: "The North star with those that are about him."

It seems more consistent with the stellar arrangement to regard the four stars forming the bowl of the Dipper as representing a bear, and the three stars in the handle of the Dipper as representing the cubs following in her steps, "her train," than to regard the constellation as a bear with a long tail.

The Arabs also had a consistent figure in the Bier with three mourners following. This title "the Bier" is so similar to the almost universal appellation "the Bear," that we might almost suppose that the latter title was a confused rendering of the former.

In some time antedating history, nomads of the east familiar with this constellation of "the Bier" may have reached North America and there conveyed their conception of this star group to the Indians, who translated the idea into terms familiar to their lives. The bier was distinctly an object familiar in the Orient, and foreign to the western savage, whereas the bear was foreign to the far east and familiar to the western Indian, whose life was bound up in the hunt. It therefore seems natural that in the east we should find the bier followed by the mourners represented by these prominent stars of the northern sky, and among the Indians we should see this same star group likened to a bear pursued by hunters.

Proctor is of the opinion that originally this was the only Bear constellation, and that it was a much larger figure than at present. Modern astronomers, finding a great vacant space where formerly the Bear's large frame extended, formed there the new constellation "Canes