NEBULOSITY IN THE PLEIADES.
Photograph by Yerkes Observatory through the 40-inch refracting telescope.
Since the Pleiad group may be seen from every civilized country in the world, the stars have a host of legends, songs and stories twined about them. One idea, however, has run like a herald through all these widely separated countries and that is that one of the stars of the Pleiades was lost and that there were originally seven bright stars.
The "Little Dipper of the Pleiades."
Although it is generally agreed that one of the Pleiads was lost, opinions seem to differ as to whether it was Electra or Merope as these two sisters had earthly reasons for sorrow; Merope, for instance, hiding embarrassed because she had married a mortal when all of her sisters had married gods. Another legend claims that it was Pleione, mother of the seven sisters, who was lost. Pickering, taking a practical view, believes that the true "Lost Pleiad" was Pleione, for the spectroscope reveals her star to be a variable star.
To the ancient people of Greece who taught even their children how to tell the time of the day by the position of the sun and what to do when certain stars rose and set, it would have been unpardonable not to have known the Pleiades. They thought that the gods had set the stars in the sky to keep the people from living in confusion. Thus Jupiter tells
"when the land
Must be upturned by ploughshare or by spade—
What time to plant the olive or the vine—
What time to fling on earth the golden grain.
For He it was who scattered o'er the sky
The shining stars, and fixed them where they are—
Provided constellations through the year,
To mark the seasons in their changeless course."