A WORD R)R WEEDS. 



239 



some of these European weeds suddenly 

 appear. The degree of permanency of 



some of these foreigners offers an inter- 

 esting study. Xot being attended by 

 their natural enemies, those that attack 

 them in their home lands, and reaching 

 new and favorable soil, the} - often in- 

 crease and multiply to an astonishing 

 extent, holding their own and driving 

 out the natives. Some cases are cited 

 from Maine where the orange hawkweed 

 has even made incursions into the for- 

 ests, driving out the wild flowers. 



Not many years ago the prickly lettuce 



made its first appearance about Provi- 

 dence. It now covers waste places all 

 about that city and suburban villages. 

 In a trip made to Chicago in 1900 it was 

 never out of sight from the car windows. 

 Now it is said, and this too is curious, 

 it has reached its acme and is slowly 

 decreasing. 



Railway yards and ballast heaps are 

 always places of pious pilgrimage to the 

 plant lover. There he is sure to pick 

 up some rare or curious immigrant. 

 State and national governments must 

 keep vigilant watch for these intruders. 



PoPULW^?\STRqN6MY 



THE HEAVENS IN OCTOBER. 



BY GARRETT P. SERVTSS, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



With the exception of Mercury, which 

 sets very early — too early for the hours 

 represented in the diagram — the only 

 conspicuous planet adorning the evening 

 sky this month is Saturn, situated in the 

 constellation Pisces, Saturn is well up 

 in the east at 9 o'clock on the 1st of Oc- 

 tober and at 7 o'clock on the 3rd. It 

 lies southeast of the Great Square of 

 Pegasus and very close to the equator. 

 It is readily distinguishable from the 

 stars on account of its placid unscintil- 

 lant light. The rings are now sufficiently 

 open to present a very attractive specta- 

 cle with a telescope, the earth being sit- 

 uated about six degrees and the sun 

 about six and a half degrees south of 

 the plane of the rings. It is, according- 

 ly, their south surface that we see. They 

 were a little more widely opened in Au- 

 gust, and they will grow gradually nar- 

 rower until the middle of December. 

 ( )n October 1st the minor axis of the 

 rings will be about one-ninth as great as 

 the major axis — in other words the ap- 

 parent length of the rings, projecting out 

 east and west on each side of the globe 

 of the planet, will be nine times as great 



as their greatest apparent breadth north 

 and south. In fact the rings are circles, 

 but being situated in the plane of Sat- 

 urn's equator, which is not far from co- 

 incidence with the plane of the earth's 

 equator, they present themselves always 

 more or less edgewise to the line of 

 sight, and consequently are seen in the 

 form of long ellipses. Recent studies of 

 these rings have thrown some light upon 

 their probable constitution. It has long 

 been known that they are not solid bo- 

 dies, but, instead, are composed of innum- 

 erable particles revolving independently, 

 yet almost in contact with one another, 

 around the planet, like flocks of minute 

 moons. Certain phenomena which they 

 have presented when seen exactly edge- 

 wise have led to the conclusion that they 

 are subject to the action of tidal forces 

 which may eventually dissipate them, 

 sending some clown upon the planet and 

 others out beyond their present limits 

 where they may be aggregated into larg- 

 er bodies, thus forming true satellites or 

 moons. The present known number of 

 Saturn's moons, all situated beyond the 

 outer border of the rings, is ten. Of 

 these four or five can easily be seen with 

 telescopes, and one of them, named Ti- 



