Allen states that Cancer is said to have been the Akkadian "Sun of the South," perhaps from its position at the winter solstice in very remote antiquity, but afterwards it was associated with the fourth month "Duzu" (our June-July), and was known as "the Northern Gate of the Sun." In Yucatan one of the temples was dedicated to Cancer, and the sun when it occupied that sign was supposed to descend at noon like a bird of fire, and consume the sacrifice on the altar.
Cancer is celebrated chiefly because it contains the great naked eye star cluster "Præsepe," the so-called "Manger," from which two asses, represented by stars near by, are supposed to feed. This cluster is known in English astronomical folk-lore as "the Beehive," a name we do not know the origin of. This marvellous aggregation of suns presents on a clear night a dim misty appearance. It has often been mistaken for a comet.
The "Beehive" is especially interesting historically as it afforded Galileo one of the earliest telescopic proofs of the existence of multitudes of stars invisible to the naked eye. He wrote: "The nebula called Præsepe, which is not one star, only, but a mass of more than forty small stars. I have noticed thirty stars besides the Aselli." The great telescopes of the present day reveal in this cluster three hundred and sixty-three stars.
Præsepe has been regarded as representing the Manger in which Christ was born, and Cæsius likened it to the Breastplate of Righteousness. Schiller claimed that Præsepe and the Aselli represented St. John the Evangelist.
The most ancient scientific observation of Jupiter that is known to us was noted by Ptolemy as having occurred eighty-three years after the death of Alexander the Great, when Jupiter happened to pass over the Manger. This was in 240 b.c.
In June, 1895, all the planets except Neptune were in this quarter of the heavens, and here it was that Halley's celebrated comet appeared in 1531.
