Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/224

188 by the gods, evidently on account of their surpassing loveliness. The laureate of the Egyptian court, Callimachus, wrote a poem thereon. The “delicate” flattery succeeded to the fullest extent; the queen was more than satisfied, and the Coma Berenices shines down on us to the present day! The catalogue of stars which forms part of the famous Almagest of Ptolemy of Alexandria, an astronomer who flourished in the second century after Christ, contains 1022 stars, arranged in forty-eight such constellations. Although these fanciful divisions and classifications of the stars are altogether lacking a scientific or other practical and intelligible basis, and would seem, as Sir John Herschel truly and pertinently observes, to have been purposely named and delineated to cause as much confusion as possible, yet the general convenience which they afford is so great, and the stars have in process of time become so intensely identified with their names, that they have for ages been permitted, and must even in our own days still be permitted, to retain them.

A much more rational division of the stars,