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This famous star-group commemorating the romantic Queen of Ethiopia whose vain boasting of her beauty was punished by the exposure of her daughter Andromeda to the ``Sea Monster, is well-marked by five stars which form an irregular letter ``W'' with its open side toward the pole.
When there is no very close resemblance, as is the case with all the large constellations, position must have counted for something in determining the association between a star-group and a known object. Now the constellations north of the equator assume so many and such various positions that this special consideration does not apply very forcibly to them.
In these days, when observations of such marvellous exactness are daily and nightly made, when instruments capable of revealing the actual constitution of the stars are employed, and observers are so numerous, it may seem strange to attach any interest to the question whether half-savage races recognised in such and such a star-group the likeness of a bear, or in another group the semblance of a ship.
If I wish to ennoble the heavens by the constellations I see there, 'Charles's Wain' would be more true than 'Dipper. My friend Frederick Myers was humorously indignant that that prodigious star-group should remind us Americans of nothing but a culinary utensil. What shall we call a THING anyhow?
The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has always caused me great wonder. I cannot understand why its beauty, and serviceableness, should have been associated with the rank scent which has been really among the most powerful means of degrading peasant life, and separating it from that of the higher classes.
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