We can readily understand that in the very beginning of observations in all countries, the moment man began to observe anything, he took note of the stars, and as soon as he began to talk about them he must have started by defining, in some way or other, the particular stars he meant. Observers would first consider the brightest stars, and separate them from the dimmer ones; they would then discuss the stars which never set, and separate them from those which did rise and set; then they would take the most striking configurations, whether large or small. They would naturally, in a Northern clime, choose out the constellation the Great Bear, or Orion, and for small groups the Pleiades. These would attract attention, and be named before anything else. Then, later on, it would be imperative, in order to connect their solar with their stellar observations, that they should name the stars which lay along the sun's path in the heavens, or those the rising of which heralded the sunrise at their festivals. They would confine their attention to a belt round the equator rather than consider the configuration of stars half-way between the equator and the north pole. In all countries--India, China, Babylonia, Egypt--they had eventually such a girdle round the heavens, called by different names in different countries, and the use of this girdle of stars, which sometimes consisted of twenty-eight stations, sometimes of twenty-seven, and sometimes of less, was to enable them to define the place of the sun, moon, or of any of the planets in relation to any of these stars. Not very many years ago, when the literature of China and India was as a sealed book, and the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the wedges of Babylonia were still unread, we had to depend for the earliest traces of astronomical observation upon the literatures of Greece and Syria, and according to these sources the asterisms first specialised and named were as follows:-- The Great Bear Job (xxxviii. 31), Homer. Orion Job (ix. 9), Homer, Hesiod. Pleiades, Hyades Job (xxxviii. 31), Homer, Hesiod. Sirius and the Great Dog Hesiod (viii.), the name; Homer called it the Star of Autumn. Aldebaran, the Bull Homer, Hesiod. Arcturus Job (ix. 9; xxxviii. 32), Homer, Hesiod. The Little Bear Thales, Eudoxus, Aratus. The Dragon Eudoxus, Aratus. In the Book of Job we read, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?"