We might even go so far as to say that possibly Mira presents to us an example of what our sun will be in the course of time, as the dead and barren moon shows us, as in a magician's glass, the approaching fate of the earth. Fortunately, human life is a mere span in comparison with the aeons of cosmic existence, and so we need have no fear that either we or our descendants for thousands of generations shall have to play the tragic _role_ of Campbell's "Last Man," and endeavor to keep up a stout heart amid the crash of time by meanly boasting to the perishing sun, whose rays have nurtured us, that, though his proud race is ended, we have confident anticipations of immortality. I trust that, when man makes his exit from this terrestrial stage, it will not be in the contemptible act of kicking a fallen benefactor. There are several other variable stars in Cetus, but none possessing much interest for us. The observer should look at the group of stars in the head, where he will find some interesting combinations, and also at Chi, which is the little star shown in the map near Zeta ([zeta]). This is a double that will serve as a very good test of eye and instrument, the smaller companion-star being of only seven and a half magnitude. Directly above Cetus is the long, straggling constellation of Pisces, the Fishes. The Northern Fish is represented by the group of stars near Andromeda and the Triangles. A long band or ribbon, supposed to bind the fish together, trends thence first southeast and then west until it joins a group of stars under Pegasus, which represents the Western Fish, not to be confounded with the Southern Fish described near the beginning of this chapter, which is a separate constellation. Fable has, however, somewhat confounded these fishes; for while, as I have remarked above, the Southern Fish is said to represent Venus after she had turned herself into a fish to escape from the giant Typhon, the two fishes of the constellation we are now dealing with are also fabled to represent Venus and her interesting son Cupid under the same disguise assumed on precisely the same occasion. If Typhon, however, was so great a brute that even Cupid's arrows were of no avail against him, we should, perhaps, excuse mythology for duplicating the record of so wondrous an event.