Even the early astronomers noticed these facts, and in ancient times they gave to the apparent road round the sky in which the sun and planets travel, in tracks relatively as close together as the parallel marks of wheels on a highway, the name zodiac. They assigned to it a certain arbitrary width, sufficient to include the orbits of all the planets known to them. This width is 8° on each side of the circle of the ecliptic, or 16° in all. They also divided the ring of the zodiac into twelve equal parts, corresponding with the number of months in a year, and each part was called a sign of the zodiac. Since there are 360° in a circle, each sign of the zodiac has a length of just 30°. To indicate the course of the zodiac to the eye, its inventors observed the constellations lying along it, assigning one constellation to each sign. Beginning at the vernal equinox, and running round eastward, they gave to these zodiacal constellations, as well as to the corresponding signs, names drawn from fancy resemblances of the figures formed by the stars to men, animals, or other objects. The first sign and constellation were called Aries, the Ram, indicated by the symbol ♈︎; the second, Taurus, the Bull, ♉︎; the third, Gemini, the Twins, ♊︎; the fourth, Cancer, the Crab, ♋︎; the fifth, Leo, the Lion, ♌︎; the sixth, Virgo, the Virgin, ♍︎; the seventh, Libra, the Balance, ♎︎; the eighth, Scorpio, the Scorpion, ♏︎; the ninth, Sagittarius, the Archer, ♐︎; the tenth, Capricornus, the Goat, ♑︎; the eleventh, Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, ♒︎; and the twelfth, Pisces, the Fishes, ♓︎. The name zodiac comes from a Greek word for animal, since most of the imaginary figures formed by the stars of the zodiacal constellations are those of animals. The signs and their corresponding constellations being supposed fixed in the sky, the planets, together with the sun and the moon, were observed to run through them in succession from west to east. When this system was invented, the signs and their constellations coincided in position, but in the course of time it was found that they were drifting apart, the signs, whose starting point remained the vernal equinox, backing westward through the sky until they became disjoined from their proper constellations. At present the sign Aries is found in the constellation next west of its original position, viz., Pisces, and so on round the entire circle. This motion, as already intimated, carries the equinoxes along with the signs, so that the vernal equinox, which was once at the beginning of the constellation Aries (as it still is at the beginning, or “first point,” of the _sign_ Aries), is now found in the constellation Pisces.