When the rings are fully open, as in fig. 30, the Saturnian system affords as charming an object for telescopic observation as the astronomer can desire. The rings are then exhibited in their full beauty. The divisions, the dark ring, and the strange shading of the middle ring, can be well seen in a telescope of adequate power. The telescopic view is still more interesting when (as in fig. 30) the planet throws a well-marked shadow upon the rings. But perhaps the most beautiful of all the features which Saturn presents to the telescopist is the strange variety of colour to be observed upon his surface, and upon that of the rings. Mr. Browning, the eminent optician, thus describes the colours which the planet presents in his 12-inch reflector:-- "The colours I have used," he says, referring to a painting of the planet, "were--for the rings, yellow-ochre (shaded with the same) and sepia; for the globe, yellow ochre and brown madder, orange and purple, shaded with sepia. The great division in the rings is coloured sepia" (not black as commonly described). "The pole and the narrow belts situated near it on the globe are pale cobalt blue." "These tints," he adds, "are the nearest I could find to those seen on the planet; but there is a muddiness about all terrestrial colours when compared with the colours of the objects seen in the heavens. These colours could not be represented in all their brilliancy and purity, unless we could dip our pencil in a rainbow, and transfer the prismatic tints to our paper." I can corroborate these remarks from observations made upon the planet with an 8½-inch reflector. It is, indeed, a circumstance worthy of note, that the colours of the planets are much more strikingly exhibited by reflecting telescopes than by refractors, insomuch that, while Sir W. Herschel and Messrs. De la Rue and Lassell, making use of the former class of instruments, have all recorded the marked impression which the colours of Saturn and Jupiter have made upon them, we find that few corresponding observations have been made by observers who have been armed with even the most perfect specimens of the refracting telescope. It must be noticed, however, that the colours of Saturn and his ring-system can only be seen in the most favourable observing weather. FOOTNOTES: [14] Who assigned to him, as his representative metal, lead--a metal "heavy, dull, and slow," as Don Armado puts it, in "Love's Labour's Lost." [15] Attention has lately been called, by the astronomers of the Washington Observatory, to the fact that the statement usually made in our books of astronomy, that Sir W. Herschel's latest determination of Saturn's rotation period was 10h. 29m., is incorrect. His only determination of the period gave 10h. 16m. 44s. for the Saturnian day. [Illustration] XII. _FANCIED FIGURES AMONG THE STARS._