5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



amends for neglecting to furnish their heavenly Bull with hind- 

 quarters, the ancients gave him a most prodigious and beautiful j)air 

 of horns, which make the beholder feel alarmed for the safety of 

 Orion. Starting out of the head above the Hyades, as illustrated in 

 our cut, the horns curve upward and to the east, each being tipped by 

 a bright star. Along and between the horns runs a scattered and 



TuE " Golden Hokns " of Taukus. 



broken stream of minute stars which seem to be gathered into knots 

 just beyond the end of the horns, where they dip into the edge of the 

 Milky- AVay. Many of. these stars can be seen, on a dark night, with 

 an ordinary opera-glass, but to see them well, one should use as large 

 a field-glass as he can obtain. With such a glass their appearance 

 almost makes one suspect that Yirgil had a poetic prevision of the 

 wonders yet to be revealed by the telescope when he wrote, as ren- 

 dered by Dryden, of iSie season — 



" Wlien with his golden horns in full career 

 The Bull beats down the barriers of the year." 



Below the tips of the horns, and over Orion's head, there is also a 

 rich clustering of stars, as if the Bull were flaunting shreds of spark- 

 ling raiment torn from some celestial victim of his fury. With an 

 ordinary glass, however, the observer will not find this star-sprinkled 

 region around the horns of Taurus as brilliant a spectacle as that pre- 

 sented by the Hyades and the group of stars just above tliem in the 

 Bull's ear. The two stars in the tips of the horns are both interest- 

 ing, each in a different way. The u])per and brighter one of the two 

 marked Beta (y8) in Map No. 2, is called El Nath. It is common to 

 the left horn of Taurus and the right foot of Auriga, who is repre- 

 sented standing just above. It is a singularly white star. This quality 



