Sirius is an intensely white star, but its whiteness is shot with a tint of blue or green. It has not the purity of light of Spica. Owing also to its great brilliance, it twinkles incessantly, darting, in an unsteady atmosphere, rays of all the colors of the rainbow. The spectroscope shows that it is a sun at an earlier stage of development than ours. It is also a binary. A very massive companion, singularly faint for its size, revolves round it in a period of about fifty-three years. At present the distance between these stars is more than 6″. The small star is more than half as massive as Sirius, but ten thousand times less brilliant--one would say a dying sun linked by gravitation with another in the heyday of its life and splendor. The constellation Canis Major, of which Sirius is the leader, is very striking in outline when well above the horizon. Some six degrees west of Sirius is seen the second star of the constellation, Beta (β), or Murzim (Arabic _Al Murzim_, the “Announcer”), a name which Ideler says originated in the fact that this star rises ahead of Sirius, and thus appears to announce its coming. The remainder of the constellation should be viewed an hour or two later than that for which Chart IV is drawn, or a month later in the season, when it is farther from the horizon. It represents the hind-quarters of the imaginary dog. The star Epsilon (ε), or Adhara, perhaps the brightest in the group, is a double; colors orange and violet; distance 7″.5. The smaller star is of only the ninth magnitude. Delta (δ) is called Wezen, the “Weight,” because “the star seems to rise with difficulty from the horizon,” an excellent instance of the fanciful titles which the Arabs and others often gave to stars. Zeta (ζ) is Furud, and Eta (η) Aludra. The meaning of these names is uncertain. Allen says that the Arabs called Epsilon, Delta, Eta, and Omicron (ο) “The Virgins.” But they had other names for them suggested by fancied resemblances as they rose sparkling from the desert. From Canis Major the eye rises to Orion, the most glorious of all constellations: “Whoso kens not him in cloudless night Gleaming aloft, shall cast his eyes in vain To find a brighter sign in all the heaven.”