Stránka:roll 1910.djvu/115

THE STARS As Seen with the Naked Eye (The chief works referred to in this are C. Flammarion's Popular Astronomy" (Gore's translation), and Garrett P. Serviss' "Astronomy with an Opera Glass." Those who wish to go further a-sky are referred to these books.) Whether he expects to use them as guides or not, every boy should learn the principal constellations and the important stars. A non-scientific friend said to me once : " I am always glad that I learned the principal star groups when I was young. I have never forgotten them, and, no matter in what strange country I find myself, I can always look up at night, and see the old familiar stars that shone on me in my home in my own country." All American boys know the Dipper or Great Bear. This is, perhaps, the most important star group in our sky, because of its size, peculiar form, and the fact that it never sets in our latitude, and last, that it always points out the Pole-star, and, for this reason, it is sometimes known as the Pointers. It is called the Dipper because it is shaped like a dipper with a long, bent handle. Why it is called the Great Bear is not so easy to explain. The classical legend has it that the nymph Calisto, having violated her vow, was changed by Diana into a bear, which, after death, was immortalized in the sky by Zeus. An- other suggestion is that the earliest astronomers, the Chaldeans, called these stars " the shining ones," and their word happened to be very like the Greek arktos (a bear). Another explanation (I do not know who is authority for either) is that vessels in olden days were named for animals, etc. They bore at the prow the carved efifigy of the namesake, and, if the Great Bear, for example, made several very happy voyages by setting out when a certain constellation was in the ascendant, that constellation might become known as the Great Bear's constellation. Cer-