There is, on the other hand, no difficulty in understanding how the Seven Stars obtained their second title of the Wain, or Plough, or Bier. Here we have a plain case of imitative name-giving—a suggestion by resemblance almost as direct as that which established in our skies a Triangle and a Northern Crown. Curiously enough, the individual appellations still current for the stars of the Plough, include a reminiscence of each system of nomenclature—the legendary and the imitative. The brightest of the seven, _α_ Ursæ Majoris, the Pointer nearest the Pole, is designated _Dubhe_, signifying, in Arabic, ‘bear’; while the title _Benetnasch_—equivalent to _Benât-en-Nasch_, ‘daughters of the bier’—of the furthest star in the plough-handle, perpetuates the lugubrious fancy, native in Arabia, by which the group figures as a corpse attended by three mourners. Turning to the second great constellation mentioned in both Homeric epics, we again meet traces of remote and unconscious tradition: yet less remote, probably, than that concerned with the Bear—certainly less inscrutable; for recent inquiries into the lore and language of ancient Babylon have thrown much light on the relationships of the Orion fable. There seems no reason to question the validity of Mr. Robert Brown’s interpretation of the word by the Accadian _Ur-ana_, ‘light of heaven.’[37] But a proper name is significant only where it originates. Moreover, it is considered certain that the same brilliant star-group known to Homer no less than to us as Orion, was termed by Chaldeo-Assyrian peoples ‘Tammuz,’[38] a synonym of Adonis. Nor is it difficult to divine how the association came to be established. For, about 2000 B.C., when the Euphratean constellations assumed their definitive forms, the belt of Orion began to be visible before dawn in the month of June, called ‘Tammuz,’ because the death of Adonis was then celebrated. It is even conceivable that the heliacal rising of the asterism may originally have given the signal for that celebration. We can at any rate scarcely doubt that it received the name of ‘Tammuz’ because its annual emergence from the solar beams coincided with the period of mystical mourning for the vernal sun. Footnote 37: _Myth of Kirke_, p. 146. Footnote 38: Lenormant, _Origines de l’Histoire_, t. 1. p. 247.