Perseus [Algol, the Demon-Star]; Pisces, the Fishes; Piscis Australis, the Southern Fish; the Triangles. A circular index-map, maps on a larger scale, of the constellations described, and pictures of remarkable objects. CHAPTER IV. THE STARS OF WINTER 89 _Description of the Constellations_--Argo, Jason's Ship; Canis Major, the Great Dog [Sirius]; Eridanus, the river Po; Lepus, the Hare; Monoceros, the Unicorn; Orion [the Great Nebula]; Taurus, the Bull [the Pleiades and Hyades]. A circular index-map, maps on a larger scale, of the constellations described, and pictures of remarkable objects. CHAPTER V. THE MOON, THE PLANETS, AND THE SUN 118 Description of lunar "seas," mountains, and "craters," with a map of the moon, and cuts showing its appearance with a field-glass. _Opera-glass observation of_--The sun (one cut), Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and his satellites (one cut), Saturn, Uranus (three cuts). ASTRONOMY WITH AN OPERA-GLASS. INTRODUCTION. Star-gazing was never more popular than it is now. In every civilized country many excellent telescopes are owned and used, often to very good purpose, by persons who are not practical astronomers, but who wish to see for themselves the marvels of the sky, and who occasionally stumble upon something that is new even to professional star-gazers. Yet, notwithstanding this activity in the cultivation of astronomical studies, it is probably safe to assert that hardly one person in a hundred knows the chief stars by name, or can even recognize the principal constellations, much less distinguish the planets from the fixed stars. And of course they know nothing of the intellectual pleasure that accompanies a knowledge of the stars. Modern astronomy is so rapidly and wonderfully linking the earth and the sun together, with all the orbs of space, in the bonds of close physical relationship, that a person of education and general intelligence can offer no valid excuse for not knowing where to look for Sirius or Aldebaran, or the Orion nebula, or the planet Jupiter. As Australia and New Zealand and the islands of the sea are made a part of the civilized world through the expanding influence of commerce and cultivation, so the suns and planets around us are, in a certain sense, falling under the dominion of the restless and resistless mind of man. We have come to possess vested intellectual interests in Mars and Saturn, and in the sun and all his multitude of fellows, which nobody can afford to ignore.