in astronomy, are seven stars in the bull's head, famous among the poets for the bringing of rain. Whence their name Ὑάδες, from the Greek ὑάδης "to rain." The principal of them is in the left eye, by the Arabs called aldebaran.

The poets feign them the daughters of Atlas and Pleone. Their brother Hyas being torn to pieces by a lioness, they wept his death with such vehemence, that the gods, in compassion to them, translated them into heaven, and placed them in the bull's forehead, where they continue to weep; this constellation being supposed to prefigure rain. Others represent the Hyades as Bacchus's nurses; and the same with the Dodonides, who fearing the resentment of Juno, and flying from the cruelty of king Lycurgus, were translated by Jupiter into heaven.

HYENA, in zoology, see CANIS.

HYÆNIUS Lapis, in natural history, the name of a stone said to be found in the eyes of the hyena. Pliny tells us, that those creatures were in old times hunted and destroyed for the sake of these stones, and that it was supposed they gave a man the gift of prophecy by being put under his tongue.