Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/94

 when reptiles of great size literally overran the earth and cluttered up the sea. Many of these forms have been reconstructed from fossils found embedded in the rock strata. These are most amazing, grotesque and even terrifying and may be seen in any of the great museums. If a museum is not handy one may shiver with real thrills by going through the pages of a well illustrated text on geology.

Some such creature as one of these was Cetus,—according to the poets. Some authors think that the whole story of Andromeda is an allegory; others, that it may have been based, though somewhat lightly, upon a historical fact. Ancient authorities (Pliny, Josephus and others), claim that the bones of Cetus were brought from Joppa to Rome and there exhibited by M. Scarus, and it is also claimed that the people along the sea-coast at this time were driven forth in hysterical fear, for when the monster appeared it not only swallowed up the cattle as they came to browse at the river's mouth but also snatched the children as they splashed about at play. Mythology tells us that Hercules, as well as Perseus, once killed such a sea-monster as this and it is then related that he tried to narrow the width of the strait leading into the Mediterranean by pushing the rocks on either shore closer together so as to prevent further invasions of Neptune's fierce and terrible creatures.

The pictures of Cetus differ in the old star-maps although he is almost always represented as being strange and ferocious. After having drawn the animal, however, with scales and claws, a mad, mad tail and sometimes even rows of teeth, the mapmaker becomes conservative and calls it "Cetus, the Whale."

As a constellation, Cetus first begins to appear in September but does not get fully above the horizon for almost four months. By January he is completely visible, his huge, faint form covering over 40 degrees of sky. His head is rather pentagonal as impressed among the stars and extends on a long neck above the celestial