The division of the sky into constellations dates back to the most primitive times, long before the Christian era, and the crooked and irregular boundaries of these constellations, shown by the dotted lines in Fig. 120, such as no modern astronomer would devise, are an inheritance from antiquity, confounded and made worse in its descent to our day. The boundaries assigned to constellations near the south pole are much more smooth and regular, since this part of the sky, invisible to the peoples from whom we inherit, was not studied and mapped until more modern times. The old traditions associated with each constellation a figure, often drawn from classical mythology, which was supposed to be suggested by the grouping of the stars: thus Ursa Major is a great bear, stalking across the sky, with the handle of the Dipper for his tail; Leo is a lion; Cassiopeia, a lady in a chair; Andromeda, a maiden chained to a rock, etc.; but for the most part the resemblances are far-fetched and quite too fanciful to be followed by the ordinary eye. 185. THE NUMBER OF STARS.--"As numerous as the stars of heaven" is a familiar figure of speech for expressing the idea of countless number, but as applied to the visible stars of the sky the words convey quite a wrong impression, for, under ordinary circumstances, in a clear sky every star to be seen may be counted in the course of a few hours, since they do not exceed 3,000 or 4,000, the exact number depending upon atmospheric conditions and the keenness of the individual eye. Test your own vision by counting the stars of the Pleiades. Six are easily seen, and you may possibly find as many as ten or twelve; but however many are seen, there will be a vague impression of more just beyond the limit of visibility, and doubtless this impression is partly responsible for the popular exaggeration of the number of the stars. In fact, much more than half of what we call starlight comes from stars which are separately too small to be seen, but whose number is so great as to more than make up for their individual faintness. The Milky Way is just such a cloud of faint stars, and the student who can obtain access to a small telescope, or even an opera glass, should not fail to turn it toward the Milky Way and see for himself how that vague stream of light breaks up into shining points, each an independent star. These faint stars, which are found in every part of the sky as well as in the Milky Way, are usually called _telescopic_, in recognition of the fact that they can be seen only in the telescope, while the other brighter ones are known as _lucid stars_.