75 6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Mizar, Alcor, and the Srors Ludovocianum. 



that, and, having thus fixed its position in your mind, try to find it 

 with the opera-glass. Its distance is a little over half that between 

 Mizar and Alcor. It is of a reddish color. 



You will notice nearly overhead 

 three pairs of pretty bright stars in 

 a long, bending row, about half- 

 way between Leo and the Dipper. 

 These mark three of Ursa Major's 

 feet, and each of the pairs is well 

 worth looking at with a glass, as 

 they are beautifully grouped with 

 stars invisible to the naked eye. 

 The letters used to designate the 

 stars forming these pairs will be 

 found upon our little map of Ursa 

 Major. The scattered group of 

 faint stars beyond the bowl of 

 the Dipper forms in the Bear's head, and you will find that also a 

 field worth a few minutes' exploration. 



But, after all, no one can expect to derive from such studies as 

 these any genuine pleasure or satisfaction unless he is mindful of the 

 real meaning of what he sees. The actual truth seems almost too 

 stupendous for belief. The mind must be brought into an attitude of 

 profound contemplation in order to appreciate it. From this globe 

 we can look out in every direction into the open and boundless uni- 

 verse. Blinded and dazzled during the day by the blaze of that star, 

 of which the earth is a near and humble dependent, we are shut in as 

 by a curtain. But at night, when our own star is hidden, our vision 

 ranges into the depths of creation, and we behold them sparkling with 

 a multitude of other suns. With so simple an aid as that of an opera- 

 glass, Ave penetrate still deeper into the profundities of space, and 

 thousands more of these strange, far-away suns come into sight. 

 They are arranged in pairs, sets, rows, streams, clusters — here they 

 gleam alone in distant splendor, there they glow and flash in mighty 

 swarms. This is a look into heaven more splendid than the materi- 

 alizing imagination of Bunyan pictured ; here is a celestial city whose 

 temples arc suns, and whose streets are the pathways of light. 



\ i "i leotioh of <lr;i\\ in^s by the Jesuit botanist, Camelli (1661-1706), illus- 

 trating his lists of plants <>f the Island of Luzon in Ray's " Ilistoria Plantarum," 

 exists in good preservation in the library of the Jesuits' College at Louvain. It 

 contains two hundred and fifty-seven autograph plates, with five hundred and 

 fifty-six figures of plants, and three plates, with nine figures relating to zoology. 

 It was obtained al the Bale of the library of Jussieu, and hears annotations in his 

 handwriting:, 



