assigned to Jupiter; and in this case may have reference to the constellation being situated on the confines of the two hemispheres. In mythology Orion was an intrepid hunter of enormous size. He was the same personage as Orus, Arion, the Minotaur, and Nimrod, and afterwards became Saturn. Orion is called _Tsan_ in Chinese, which signifies three, and corresponds to the three kings. [Illustration: FIG. 6.] The Asiatics used not to trace the images of their constellations, but simply joined the component stars by straight lines, and placed at the side the hieroglyphic characters that represented the object they wished to name. Thus joining by five lines the principal stars in Orion, they placed at the side the hieroglyphics representing a man and a sword, from whence the Greeks derived the figure they afterwards drew of a giant armed with a sword. We must include in this series that brightest of all stars, Sirius. It forms part of the constellation of the Great Dog, and lies to the south of Orion near the extreme limit of our vision into the Southern hemisphere in our latitudes. This star seems to have been intimately connected with Egypt, and to have derived its name--as well as the name of the otherwise unimportant constellation it forms part of--from that country, and in this way:-- The overflowing of the Nile was always preceded by an Etesian wind, which, blowing from north to south about the time of the passage of the sun beneath the stars of the Crab, drove the mists to the south, and accumulated them over the country whence the Nile takes its source, causing abundant rains, and hence the flood. The greatest importance attached to the foretelling the time of this event, so that people might be ready with their provisions and their places of security. The moon was no use for this purpose, but the stars were, for the inundation commenced when the sun was in the stars of the Lion. At this time the stars of the Crab just appeared in the morning, but with them, at some distance from the ecliptic, the bright star Sirius also rose. The morning rising of this star was a sure precursor of the inundation. It seemed to them to be the warning star, by whose first appearance they were to be ready to move to safer spots, and thus acted for each family the part of a faithful dog. Whence they gave it the name of the Dog, or Monitor, in Egyptian _Anubis_, in Phenician _Hannobeach_, and it is still the Dog-Star--_Caniculus_, and its rising commences our _dog-days_. The intimate connection between the rising of this star and the rising of the Nile led people to call it also the Nile star, or simply the Nile; in Egyptian and Hebrew, _Sihor_; in Greek, [Greek: Sothis]; in Latin, _Sirius_.