Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/52

 The stars, however, rise two hours earlier every month and this brings the Dipper, when observed during the early hours of darkness, to different positions in the sky during the different seasons.

Since this conspicuous star figure travels completely around the arctic circle of the heavens in twenty-four hours, the space within this circle has been likened to a great star clock, the two outer stars on the bowl—called "The Pointers"—forming the hour hand which always points toward the center of the clock marked by the North Star. With a little attention anyone may learn to judge the time by this timepiece and wager as much on it as the Carrier in Shakespeare's King Henry IV who looks up as he enters the Inn Yard with his lantern and remarks:

The Big Dipper is called "Charles' Wain" in England, the bowl being the wagon or wain, and the stars on the handle, the horses. It is also called "David's chariot" and the "Plowshare." In Rome these seven bright stars were called "Septentriones" or "The Seven Plowing Oxen"; in Greece, simply the "Triones."

Boötes, so the story runs, being of an ingenious turn of mind, tilled his land in fine order by inventing the plow which he hitched to two oxen. For this he was given the title of the "Herdsman" or the "Ox-driver" and placed in the heavens to follow the stars of the Big Dipper which resembles a "wain" or a plow. Boötes' constellation, though very large, is formed of faint stars,—with the exception of one brilliant golden-yellow star which may be located by drawing a curve from the end of the Big Dipper's handle.