CANCER

, the Crab, one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, usually drawn on the globe in the form of a crab, and in books of Astronomy denoted by a character resembling the number sixty-nine, turned sideways, thus .

This is one of the 48 old constellations; and, from the hieroglyphic mode of writing among the Egyptians &c, it is probable that they gave the name and figure to this constellation from the following circumstance, viz, that as the crab is an animal that goes sideling backwards, so the sun, in his annual course through the zodiac, when he arrives at this part of the ecliptic, having reached his utmost limit northwards, begins there to return back again towards the south. But the Greeks, who adapted some fable of their own to every thing of this kind, pretend that when Hercules was fighting with | the Lernæan hydra, there was a crab upon the marsh which seized his foot. The hero crushed the reptile to pieces under his heel; but Juno, in gratitude for the offered service, little as it was, raised the creature into the heavens.

The number of stars in the sign cancer, Ptolemy makes 13, Tycho 15, Bayer and Hevelius 29, and Flamsteed 83.

Tropic of Cancer, a little circle of the sphere parallel to the equinoctial, and passing through the beginning of the sign cancer.