By the first of the year the starry "Square" of the beautiful Pegasus has entirely disappeared. Andromeda and Perseus soon follow but Cassiopeia continues around the horizon in the north. Throughout the spring and early summer Pegasus remains in regions below our sight but in September he again appears and flies inverted up the heavens in the east. CETUS, THE SEA-MONSTER [Figure 40] Early poets describe Cetus as a monster armored with heavy scales or as being long-necked and clawed, which brings to mind the sea-reptiles which are known to have inhabited the sea during the Mesozoic Age. Although poets are known for their tendency to exaggerate, this in itself is enough to lend a spicy interest to the legend, for one's thoughts fly back to the world's young days when reptiles of great size literally overran the earth and cluttered up the sea. Many of these forms have been reconstructed from fossils found embedded in the rock strata. These are most amazing, grotesque and even terrifying and may be seen in any of the great museums. If a museum is not handy one may shiver with real thrills by going through the pages of a well illustrated text on geology. Some such creature as one of these was Cetus,--according to the poets. Some authors think that the whole story of Andromeda is an allegory; others, that it may have been based, though somewhat lightly, upon a historical fact. Ancient authorities (Pliny, Josephus and others), claim that the bones of Cetus were brought from Joppa to Rome and there exhibited by M. Scarus, and it is also claimed that the people along the sea-coast at this time were driven forth in hysterical fear, for when the monster appeared it not only swallowed up the cattle as they came to browse at the river's mouth but also snatched the children as they splashed about at play. Mythology tells us that Hercules, as well as Perseus, once killed such a sea-monster as this and it is then related that he tried to narrow the width of the strait leading into the Mediterranean by pushing the rocks on either shore closer together so as to prevent further invasions of Neptune's fierce and terrible creatures. The pictures of Cetus differ in the old star-maps although he is almost always represented as being strange and ferocious. After having drawn the animal, however, with scales and claws, a mad, mad tail and sometimes even rows of teeth, the mapmaker becomes conservative and calls it "Cetus, the Whale."