Above Scorpio and Sagittarius are the intertwined constellations of Ophiuchus and Serpens. He who may wish to disentangle them is referred to _Astronomy with the Naked Eye_. But the outlines can be traced in Chart VII. The head of Serpens, like those of Hydra and Draco, is plainly marked by a striking group of stars, in this case resembling the figure called a “quincunx.” From this point just under the “Northern Crown,” the serpent’s stars wind downward in beautiful pairs and groups, crossing the meridian above Scorpio, and rising again in the eastern part of the sky, above the little constellation of Sobieski’s Shield, until they meet the borders of Aquila. Ophiuchus, with his head high up toward Hercules, where it is marked by the brightest star in that part of the sky, Alpha Ophiuchi, or Ras Alhague, the “Head of the Serpent Charmer,” stands with legs braced wide apart, grasping the serpent at the points marked by the stars Delta (δ) and Epsilon (ε), and Tau (τ) and Nu (ν). It is Esculapius with his Serpent, said the Greeks; it is St. Paul and the Viper of Melita, or Moses and the Brazen Serpent, we don’t know which, said the churchmen. I am not aware that in England they have ever been tempted to call it St. George and the Dragon. Politics and national pride have not meddled much with the stars, although there was once an attempt to fix the name of Napoleon upon Orion. Ras Alhague is described by R. H. Allen as sapphire in hue, while Alpha Serpentis is yellowish. The star Lambda (λ) in Ophiuchus, also called Marfik, the “Elbow,” is a beautiful binary, period 235 years, distance apart 1″.2. The smaller star is smalt blue, a splendid telescopic object. But, as in the case of Sagittarius, the greater wonders here are in the form of star-clusters, and particularly nebulæ. Just above Antares, in one of the feet of Ophiuchus, is a small star, Rho (to find which the reader must consult a large star atlas, like Klein’s), around which Barnard has discovered, by photography, a truly marvellous nebula, a nebula which appears _to obscure the stars_ like a cloud of cosmic dust. Great black lanes extend from and around it, and even the luminous parts of the nebula seem to absorb the light of the stars behind, diminishing their brightness a whole magnitude or more where they are veiled by it. This entire region of sky is most strange to the photographic eye. An outlier of the nebula just mentioned surrounds the star Nu (ν) in Scorpio, and its veiling effect upon the stars is even more evident. There is a similar appearance around the star Theta (θ) Ophiuchi, not far away. The sense of some appalling mystery in this part of the firmament is heightened by what Barnard says of a thing which has reappeared again and again on his photographs during the past fifteen years, at a point which he describes as lying very closely to R. A. xviii hours, 25 m., 31 s.; Decl. S. 26°, 9′ (near the star Lambda (λ) in Sagittarius).