Either way, we have no account of the origin of the _names_, and it is possible that we may have to seek it, if ever we find it, from other sources--for it would appear that similar names were used for the same constellations by the Indians. This seems inevitably proved by what is related by Wilford (_Asiatic Researches_, III.) of his conversation with his pundit, an astronomer, on the names of the Indian constellations. "Asking him," he says, "to show me in the heavens the constellation of Antarmada, he immediately pointed to Andromeda, though I had not given him any information about it beforehand. He afterwards brought me a very rare and curious work in Sanscrit, which contained a chapter devoted to _Upanacchatras_, or extra-zodiacal constellations, with drawings of _Capuja_ (Cepheus), and of _Casyapi_ (Cassiopeia) seated and holding a lotus flower in her hand, of _Antarmada_ charmed with the fish beside her, and last of _Parasiea_ (Perseus) who, according to the explanation of the book, held the head of a monster which he had slain in combat; blood was dropping from it, and for hair it had snakes." As the stars composing a constellation have often very little connection with the figure they are supposed to form, when we find the same set of stars called by the same name by two different nations, as was the case, for instance, in some of the Indian names of constellations among the Americans, it is a proof that one of the nations copied it from the other, or that both have copied from a common source. So in the case before us, we cannot think these similar names have arisen independently, but must conclude that the Grecian was borrowed from the Indian. Another well-known constellation in this neighbourhood, forming an isosceles triangle with Arcturus and the Pole Star, is the Lyre. Lucian of Samosatus says that the Greeks gave this name to the constellation to do honour to the Lyre of Orpheus. Another possible explanation is this. The word for lyre in Greek [Greek: chelys] and in Latin (_testudo_) means also a tortoise. Now at the time when this name was imposed the chief star in the Lyre may have been very near to the pole of the heavens and therefore have had a very slow motion, and hence it might have been named the tortoise, and this in Greek would easily be interpreted into lyre instead. Indeed this double meaning of the word seems certainly to have given rise to the fable of Mercury having constructed a lyre out of the back of a tortoise. Circling round the pole of the ecliptic, and formed by a sinuous line of stars passing round from the Great Bear to the Lyre, is the Dragon, which owes its name to its form. Its importance is derived from its relation to the ecliptic, the pole of which is determined by reference to the stars of the first coil of the body. The centre of the zodiacal circle is a very important point, that circle being traced on the most ancient spheres, and probably being noticed even before the pole of the heavens.