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This webpage reproduces a section of
Star Names
Their Lore and Meaning
by
Richard Hinckley Allen
as reprinted
in the Dover edition, 1963

The text is in the public domain.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

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 p220  Felis, the Cat,

a word which Latin lexicographers now write Faelis, was formed by La Lande from stars between Antlia and Hydra, and first published in his Bibliographie Astronomique of 1805. Its inventor said of it:

 p221  I am very fond of cats. I will let this figure scratch on the chart. The starry sky has worried me quite enough in my life, so that now I can have my joke with it.

In Die Gestirne, the 2d edition of Bode's maps, it appears at Katze, with twenty stars; but, except with Secchi, who included it as Gatto in his planisphere of 1878, it has long been discontinued in the catalogues and charts.

Proctor assigned this title to Canis Minor, but no one has followed him in this change.

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Page updated: 10 Dec 08