But let us turn from the contemplation of Saturn's globe, interesting though it undoubtedly is, to study those marvellous objects, the Saturnian rings. The history of their discovery is interesting, but must not here detain us long. Briefly, it runs as follows:-- Galileo, in July, 1610, observing the planet Saturn with a telescope not powerful enough to show the rings, imagined at first that Saturn had two companion planets, one on either side of him, as though helping the planet along upon his road. (From a table relating to the rings, in my treatise on "Saturn and its System," the aspect of the ring, at the time of any such observation, can at once be inferred. In the present case, for example, it will be seen from the table that the rings were closing up as the time of their disappearance, December 28, 1612, drew near.) A year and a half later, Galileo looked again at Saturn, and lo! the companion planets were gone. He was perplexed beyond measure. "What is to be said concerning so strange a metamorphosis?" he asked. "Are the two lesser stars consumed after the manner of the solar spots? Have they vanished or suddenly fled? Has Saturn, perhaps, devoured his own children? Or were the appearances indeed an illusion or fraud, with which the glasses have so long deceived me, as well as many others to whom I have shown them? Now, perhaps, is the time come to revive the well-nigh withered hopes of those who, guided by more profound contemplations, have discovered the fallacy of the new observations, and demonstrated the utter impossibility of their existence. I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for, and so novel. The shortness of the time, the unexpected nature of the event, the weakness of my understanding, and the fear of being mistaken, have greatly confounded me." Hevelius was similarly perplexed by the constantly varying appearance of the planet. "Saturn," he informed his contemporaries, "presents five various figures to the observer, to wit--first, the mono-spherical; secondly, the tri-spherical; thirdly, the spherico-ansated; fourthly, the elliptico-ansated; fifthly, and finally, the spherico-cuspidated;" of which we can only say, like Mr. Gilbert's Ferdinando, that "we know it's very clever; but we do not understand it." It was not till 1659 that Huyghens, using a telescope _forty yards long_, was able to make out the real meaning of the appendages which had so perplexed Galileo and Hevelius. He announced to the world, in an anagram, his discovery that Saturn is girdled about by a flat ring nowhere touching the planet. Huyghens also discovered the largest of Saturn's moons. He looked for no more, having the idea that, since six planets and six moons were now known, no more moons existed.