Low down in the south, east of the meridian, glows Fomalhaut, the “Fish’s Mouth,” the leading and the only bright star of Piscis Austrinus, the “Southern Fish.” With this singular star we may begin our description of the beauties of the autumn sky. Fomalhaut well deserves the epithet singular, if for nothing else than on account of its loneliness. In this respect it is more remarkable than Cor Hydræ, which it resembles in its ruddy color. Fomalhaut is the characteristic star of autumn in our latitudes, for the same reasons that cause Antares to represent the summer. Like Antares, it startles the wandering eye and fixes the attention, although, unlike the great star of Scorpio, it has no brilliant _entourage_ to emphasize its supremacy over the quarter of the sky where it shines. It is one of the sailors’ stars. To me Fomalhaut is full of boyhood memories and impressions gained when I learned the stars in the country, among the hills that shut in the Schoharie before it pours out into the valley of the Mohawk. Fortunately, Thomas Dick’s works and Burritt’s _Geography of the Heavens_ had a place in our house, and neither _The Arabian Nights_ nor _The Swiss Family Robinson_ was able to dull my appetite for them. In the course of time I knew all the great stars by name, and found a wonderful pleasure in their acquaintance, although at times they daunted me with their imposing associations with Egypt, the Nile, Babylonia, and everything that is most ancient. I shall never forget Fomalhaut flashing along in the south, just skipping the hilltops on an autumn night. A great star is never so imposing nor so mysterious as when it thus appears to be watching the earth. How immensely would the interest of many travellers’ tales be heightened if only they had known the names of the stars whose appearance they have recorded. When you have the name of the star that was seen, the season and the hour of the night are fixed at once, and the whole scene is filled with new life. When an Alpine climber, waiting in his lonely camp high on the mountain-side for the coming of day, tells me, “I saw Sirius glancing at us over a lofty peak far in the east,” I know immediately the approximate time of night and the aspect of the heavens, and the narrative gains in vividness; but if he says merely that he saw “a star” his stroke of description misses. And, then, the names of many of the stars, by their oddity and beauty, enrich the page and awake the imagination. They are, in themselves, an incantation. The lover of the stars is grateful for any reference to them by a great writer, and yet he is often disappointed by the inadequacy of descriptions that might easily have been made memorable if only their authors had known the starry heavens a little better. How disappointing, for instance, is this passage in R. H. Dana’s _Two Years before the Mast_: