THE PLANET SATURN. 357 



feet in height; the aster, dandelion, and the bright-eyed little 

 Hypericum, or " Saint John's- wort," formerly used in certain parts 

 of Europe as a charm against evil spirits. In sandy places, on 

 the edge of the woods, grows the curious " horsetail," or telescope 

 reed, sometimes known as " file-grass," as the rough, furrowed 

 stalks were once used for polishing purposes. Being without 

 true or visible blossoms, this plant belongs with the ferns, 

 mosses, and other cryptogams, and is said to have deteriorated 

 from the coal ages. 



Toward the end of September a change creeps over the face of 

 Nature, and a solemn hush heralds the approach of autumn. The 

 great, towering yew tree clothes itself with scarlet berries, and the 

 dry, yellow leaves of the maple flutter downward through the 

 quiet air, the chokecherry dons a robe of scarlet, and ripens 

 clusters of astringent fruit of an equally vivid hue ; the deciduous 

 azaleas drop their foliage into the sparkling river, and the dog- 

 wood and poison oak assume a garb of solferino, while the con- 

 tinual dropping of pine cones breaks the silence of the mountain 

 forest. Then the snow falls like a fleecy blanket, and winter sets 

 in, with its rigors of ice and sleet. 



THE PLANET SATURN. 



BY CLIFTON A. HOWES, S. B. 



T^OUBTLESS many observers of the sky are familiar with the 

 J^ planet Saturn as he slowly moves through the constellations 

 from year to year, but how many of them stop to think of the 

 wonders and mysteries connected with this far-off member of the 

 solar system ? Very few, probably ; and yet this planet is well 

 worth a closer acquaintance, for, as Prof. Langley says, " In all 

 the heavens there is no more wonderful object than the planet 

 Saturn, for it preserves to us an apparent type of the plan on 

 which all the worlds were originally made." 



Saturn was the remotest planet known to the ancients, and it 

 was probably on account of his sluggish motion along the sky 

 that a malignant influence over human affairs was attributed to 

 him by the astrologers. This slow movement is only apparent, 

 however, for he is really bowling along through space more than 

 twenty thousand miles every hour ; but such is his distance from 

 us that we can scarcely detect any change of position from night 

 to night, and must wait thirty years for him to make his circuit 

 of the heavens. 



In point of size Saturn stands next to Jupiter, the " giant of 

 the solar system," and upon his diameter nine earths could be 



