Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/58

 Many attempts have been made to account for the ridiculous length of the brightly-jeweled tails of the star-bears. Richard A. Proctor in "Easy Star Lessons" suggests that as the star maps were arranged by astronomers who being aware of the many legends but who had themselves never seen a bear, naturally supposed the three bright stars in the handle of the Big Dipper to be Ursa Major's tail and so drew it. Since the Big Dipper was made part of Ursa Major or the Great Bear, the Little Dipper, whose seven principal stars resemble those of Ursa Major, was made part of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear.

Howe remarks in his "Descriptive Astronomy" that the "length of the little fellow's tail might be ascribed to environment." 'Tis reasonable indeed. With the tip of it fastened to the North Star for a pivot it might stretch after being swung round for a few centuries. Perhaps, to go still further, this is the reason it is now so thin and therefore faint, and also why it is broken. The quaint theory of Dr. Thomas Hood, who wrote early in the 17th century, is also quoted as a possible reason for the length of the Great Bear's tail:

Ursa Major was not a real bear, however, but a beautiful and most unfortunate Arcadian nymph, named Callisto, who had been transformed by Juno, Queen of the Immortals, into this great shaggy creature. Years afterward, Callisto's son Arcas, then a boy half-grown, met the bear on a lonely pathway on the mountains and shot an arrow at the creature. Happily, as was often the way