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CONSTELLATION 123 CONSTITUTION original asterisms. Various astronomers have since then added a host of others, but most of these have fallen into disuse. Lettering the Stars. — In 1603 Bayer, in his "Uranometria, immortalized him- self by the happy thought of assigning letters to the individual stars of each of the 48 constellations of the "Almagest" beginning with the Greek alphabet and following approximately the order of brightness of the stars, and then using the lower-case Roman letters where need- ed to complete any constellation. Some confusion has arisen, especially in those extending far toward the S., in trying to identify all of Bayer's lettered stars. Ar- gelander's "Uranometria Nova" is, how- ever, accepted to-day, with a few trifling exceptions, as the cori'ect interpretation of Bayer. Lacaille, at the Cape, 1751- 1752, extended the same system to the southern constellations, and was also compelled to revise the lettering of a few of Bayer's most southern ones, which were very inaccurately delineated. As far N. as his work extended, to + 10° of declination, Dr. Gould also assigned let- ters in the constellations still unlettered, Monorceros, Scutiim, and Sextans. In the northern constellations added by Hevelius, or between his time and Ptol- emy, and which had not been lettered, Bailey assigned a few Greek letters when publishing the " B. A. C" {British Asso- ciation Catalogue) in 1845. These let- ters will probably stand in any future revision of the northern heavens, though they are not very generally used by as- tronomers to-day. It should also be noted that the last letters of the capital Roman alphabet, beginning with R, are reserved for the variable stars. This has been agreed upon since Argelander's time, and has compelled the abandonment of sev- eral such letters assigned by Lacaille in the southern heavens to stars that are not variables. Flamsteed's numbers in each constellation of the stars observed by him are also extensively used as a system of naming individual stars. These numbers refer to the order in which the stars occur in each constella- tion in his "Catalogus BHtannicus. Other early catalogues of stars arranged in this way by constellations are often used as a means of naming individual stars, especially that of Hevelius, a capi- tal H being used in this case. These numbers refer, not to the arrangement of the stars in Hevelius's original "Prodo- mus Astronomise" (1690), nor to Bailey's edition of it in the 13th volume of the "Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical So- ciety," but to Flamsteed's edition of the catalogue as published in the third vol- ume of the "Historia Cselestis Britan- nica" London, 1725, and considerable confusion has at times arisen from igno- rance of this fact. CONSTIPATION, an undue retention of the faeces or their imperfect evacua- tion. When the morbid affection is but slight it is of little moment. In most cases, however, there is headache, more rarely vertigo; while if the disease be protracted and severe, colic, haemor- rhoids, cutaneous eruptions, hysteria, epilepsy, or even ileus or enteritis, the last two fatal diseases, may be the re- sult. CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, a name given to the first convention of the dele- gates of the French nation (1787-1791) to distinguish it from the legislative as- sembly of 1791. It drew up and obtained the acceptance of the first of the famous revolutionary constitutions. The Con- stituent Assembly of 1848 had a similar aim. CONSTITUTION, the organic law, written or unwritten, of a body politic, though the word is used popularly with great vagueness. The natives of Eng- land speak with pride of the British "constitution." Each of the United States of America has a "constitution," while the Federal "constitution" holds them all together. During the demo- cratic uprising in Continental Europe in 1848, the people in each country de- manded that their despotic sovereigns should grant them a "constitution." In all these cases the constitution is an or- ganization of the great body politic with regard to such fundamental matters as legislative, executive, and judicial power and authority. In the uprisings in 1848, the constitution sought was an instru- ment having the force of solemn com- pact, by which the despot, who had hith- erto ruled alone, or nearly alone, gave a substantial share of his power to his subjects, so as to render them in a man- ner self-governed. In the United States, whether the State in point was founded before or after the War of Independence, it was an engagement between the dif- ferent portions of society as to the political powers which they should re- spectively exercise. In the British con- stitution it is the complex political or- ganization which has grown up during the many centuries that the British peo- ple have existed, and which consequently has a stability and an adaptation to all classes. One reason of the successful working of the American and the British con- stitutions has been their mixed char- acter. No class of men are morally capable of wielding supreme power with-