“That they ‘were seven who now are six’ is asserted by almost all the nations of the earth from Japan to Nigritia, and variants of the classical story of the ‘Lost Pleiad’ are still repeated by sable legend-mongers in Victoria, by headhunters in Borneo, by fetish worshippers amid the mangrove swamps of the Gold Coast. An impression thus widely diffused must either have spread from a common source or originated in an obvious fact; and it is at least possible that the veiled face of the seventh Atlantid may typify a real loss of light in a prehistorically conspicuous star.” The name Pleiades is derived from the Greek πλεἵν, to sail, because their heliacal rising occurred at the time when navigation opened in the seas of Greece, and their heliacal setting at the time of its close. “... Rude winter comes Just when the Pleiades begin to set.” But their religious significance seems always to have exceeded their practical importance as a sign of the seasons, and from the temples on the Acropolis of Athens to the sanctuaries of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru they were regarded with reverence and awe. Modern popular fancies have been less reverential, and Alcyone and her attendants have been degraded to the figure of a “hen and her chickens.” Our red-skinned predecessors on this continent were more poetical, for they saw in the Pleiades a group of lost children, and in old China they were starry sisters busy with their needlework. High overhead, above Orion and Taurus, gleams Capella, the chief star of the constellation Auriga, the “Charioteer.” This is also a white star, but no correct eye would confuse it with Rigel or Vega. It has none of the sapphire tint that is mingled in their rays, but is rather of the whiteness of cream. It is a very great star, not only in its apparent brilliance, but in actual luminosity. With a parallax of 0″.09, Newcomb calculated its luminosity at one hundred and twenty times that of the sun. It is a spectroscopic binary, the invisible companion revolving round it in a period of one hundred and four days. In spectroscopic character it closely resembles the sun, being in the same stage of development. Vogel’s observations indicate that it is flying away from us at a speed of more than a million and a quarter miles per day; but, in contradiction to this, some have thought that it is increasing in brightness. A little elongated triangle of stars below and somewhat to the west of Capella serves to render its recognition certain to the beginner in star-gazing. In the evenings of early November, when one is in the northeast and the other in the northwest, it is interesting to compare Capella with Vega, both in brightness and in color. In late January evenings Capella is near the zenith for the middle latitudes of the United States, and at such times is a superb object. The Milky Way pouring through Auriga increases the beauty of the spectacle.