In an hour Procyon, Capella, and the Twins will be setting, and Spica will be well past the meridian. In another hour the observer will perceive that the constellations are approaching the places given to them in our map, and at midnight he will find them all in their assigned positions. A single evening spent in observations of this sort will teach him more about the places of the stars than he could learn from a dozen books. Taking, now, the largest opera-glass you can get (I have before said that the diameter of the object-glasses should not be less than 1.5 inch, and, I may add, the larger they are the better), find the constellation Scorpio, and its chief star Antares. The map shows you where to look for it at midnight on the 1st of June. If you prefer to begin at nine o'clock at that date, then, instead of looking directly in the south for Scorpio, you must expect to see it just rising in the southeast. You will recognize Antares by its fiery color, as well as by the striking arrangement of its surrounding stars. There are few constellations which bear so close a resemblance to the objects they are named after as Scorpio. It does not require a very violent exercise of the imagination to see in this long, winding trail of stars a gigantic scorpion, with its head to the west, and flourishing its upraised sting that glitters with a pair of twin stars, as if ready to strike. Readers of the old story of Phaeton's disastrous attempt to drive the chariot of the Sun for a day will remember it was the sight of this threatening monster that so terrified the ambitious youth as he dashed along the Zodiac, that he lost control of Apollo's horses, and came near burning the earth up by running the Sun into it. Antares rather gains in redness when viewed with a glass. Its color is very remarkable, and it is a curious circumstance that with powerful telescopes a small, bright-green star is seen apparently almost touching it. Antares belongs to Secchi's third type of suns, that in which the spectroscopic appearances suggest the existence of a powerfully absorptive atmosphere, and which are believed on various grounds to be, as Lockyer has said, "in the last visible stage of cooling"; in other words, almost extinct. This great, red star probably in actual size exceeds our sun, and no one can help feeling the sublime nature of those studies which give us reason to think that here we can actually behold almost the expiring throes of a giant brother of our giant sun. Only, the lifetime of a sun is many millions of years, and its gradual extinction, even after it has reached a stage as advanced as that of Antares is supposed to be, may occupy a longer time than the whole duration of the human race.