Two remarkable circumstances with respect to the Constellations are, first, that they appear in most cases to be arbitrary combinations; the artificial figures which are made to include the stars, not having any resemblance to their obvious configurations; and second, that these figures, in different countries, are so far similar, as to imply some communication. The arbitrary nature of these figures shows that they {125} were rather the work of the imaginative and mythological tendencies of man, than of mere convenience and love of arrangement. "The constellations," says an astronomer of our own time,[27\3] "seem to have been almost purposely named and delineated to cause as much confusion and inconvenience as possible. Innumerable snakes twine through long and contorted areas of the heavens, where no memory can follow them: bears, lions, and fishes, large and small, northern and southern, confuse all nomenclature. A better system of constellations might have been a material help as an artificial memory." When men indicate the stars by figures, borrowed from obvious resemblances, they are led to combinations quite different from the received constellations. Thus the common people in our own country find a wain or wagon, or a plough, in a portion of the great bear.[28\3] [Note 27\3: Sir J. Herschel.] [Note 28\3: So also the Greeks, Homer, _Il._ XVIII. 487. Ἄρκτον ἢν καὶ ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν. The Northern Bear which oft the Wain they call. Ἄρκτος was the traditional name; ἄμαξα, that suggested by the form.]