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[watertank]

You are familiar with the group of stars known as the Big Dipper. If you have studied astronomy, you know that its apparent change of place is due to the turning of the earth on its axis, which makes it appear that the dipper is moving. The two outer stars in the bowl of the dipper are in line with the North Star, and the handle swings in a circle. The Big Dipper is seen in different parts of the sky during each season because of the earth's rotation around the sun. Sailors and travelers watch this constellation in order to tell the hour of the night by its position.
In France, the Big Dipper is called the Casserole; in England, the same group of stars is known as the Plough. In China, it is the Celestial Bureaucrat who, seated on a cloud, is accompanied on his rounds by his eternally hopeful petitioners. In India and Arabia, seven oxen turning a millstone represent this constellation, and the North Pole is the axle bearing in which the mill-iron turns.
Greeks, Romans, and American Indians see the Big Dipper as a Great Bear. The Sioux say it is looking for a place to lie down and hibernate. In Thebes, a large group of stars, containing the Dipper, was portrayed as a procession of a bull, a horizontal man or god, Ra-Horus, and a hippopotamus with a crocodile on its back.