CANCER.--This constellation is situated directly east of the Twins, and occupies considerable space in the heavens. Its stars are small and scattered, yet it may readily be distinguished by three small stars in the centre, which form a triangle, and nearly in the centre of this triangle is a nebula, sufficiently luminous to be distinguished with the naked eye. The appearance of this nebula to the unassisted eye is not unlike the nucleus of a comet, and it was repeatedly mistaken for the comet of 1832, which passed in its neighborhood. On being viewed through a telescope, it resolves into distinct stars, and we thus catch a glimpse of an interminable range of systems upon systems, and firmaments upon firmaments; and, in contemplating the immensity of space that encircles them, the imagination becomes bewildered and lost. Who can trace the boundless depths of air? Beyond the reach of telescope, Whose powers o'erstep the space That lies where eye may never hope To pierce, or e'en to trace The bounds of worlds which it reveals In those illimitable fields? These minute stars have the appearance of planets with oval disks, somewhat mottled, but approaching in vividness to actual planets. This constellation is on the meridian the 3d of March. The Greeks assert that Cancer received its origin through the favor of Juno, who sent a sea-crab to annoy Hercules during his famous contest with the Lernean monster. The Chaldeans, however, represented the cluster by the figure of an ass, whose name, in the Chaldaic, is _muddiness_. It is supposed to allude to the discoloring of the Nile, which began to rise when the sun was entering Cancer. * * * * * VIA LACTEA.-- "A way there is in heaven's extended plain, Which, when the sky is clear, is seen below, And mortals, by the name of Milky, know; The groundwork is of stars, through which the road Lies open to the Thunderer's abode." There is a luminous zone, varying from four to twenty degrees in width, which passes quite round the heavens, called by the Greeks Galaxy, by the Latins Via Lactea, which, in our tongue, is _Milky Way_. "Of all the constellations which the heavens exhibit to our view, this fills the mind with the most indescribable grandeur and amazement. When we consider what unnumbered millions of mighty suns compose this cluster, whose distance is so vast that the strongest telescope can hardly separate their mingled twilight into distinct specks, and that the most contiguous of any two of them may be as far asunder as our sun is from them, we fall as far short of adequate language to express our ideas of such immensity as we do of instruments to measure its boundaries."