66 Star anfr Meatber Gossip 



novelty which it has brought to me, with all my mist- 

 enshrouded horizon ? I fear it would be shorn of 

 much of its present interest to me were it to rise to the 

 altitude of, say, Regulus, or Aldebaran, or Capella, 

 or perhaps, even the Dog Star. 



It was surely anomalistic that I should obtain my 

 first clear view of Fomalhaut by going further north. 

 My point of observation was on the Durham coast ; 

 consequently the star crossed the meridian at an 

 altitude of only about five degrees. It twinkled 

 with a whitish light, I thought so low down as merely 

 to skirt some small trees placed at a distance of a 

 hundred yards or more. Anyone might easily have 

 mistaken it for a street lamp. I have said that this 

 was on the Durham coast ; to be exact, it was at 

 pleasant, suburban Foggy Furze, between West 

 Hartlepool and Seaton Carew. The last-named little 

 seaside resort lingers lovingly in my memory, for oft 

 from there have I watched the summer stars come up 

 out of the North Sea, mingling their far-off beams 

 with the quiet lights of passing ships. 



When we see Fomalhaut and this never fails to 

 interest me we indeed get a glimpse of the Far 

 South. It is a star that raises visions of a land much 

 more southern than does the sun at the Winter Solstice. 

 Fomalhaut, in fact, is thirty degrees below the Equator. 

 Yet in gazing upon it, one calls to mind that it is 

 nearly overhead at Brisbane, at Sydney, at Adelaide, 

 and at Melbourne. At Durban, too, that enterprising 

 city of Natal, it will be almost in the zenith. On the 

 other hand, I have sometimes wondered if it has ever 

 been seen from St. Petersburg, where, at sea-level, it 

 should be, theoretically, a fraction of a degree above 



