Yet another thing, which may be a novelty to many, and which is sure to afford unexpected pleasure--when you have fairly learned the constellations, take a mirror and study them by reflection. This is a counsel of intimacy. Orion will seem less remote and more comprehensible when his living image is enclosed in a frame, which you can hold on your lap like an album. There is something startling in the sight of the starry heavens under your feet. I once enjoyed the sensation in perfection while stalking deer in a boat at midnight on the placid bosom of a forest pond. The water was as motionless as so many acres of black glass, and I forgot to look for the deer, in the shaft of light from the hooded “flare” at the bow, when we seemed to be drifting out into an ocean of ether, in the middle of the sky, with stars below as well as stars above. When we silently crossed the pond, and got far from the shores, the sensation was overpowering; it took one’s breath away. We drifted right over the Milky Way, and Vega, Altair, and the “Northern Cross” gleamed beneath the keel. Be sure that your mirror is freshly silvered and clean, and remember the reversals of position which all reflections produce. If you hold the mirror before you inclined downward, the position of objects in the sky will be reversed top for bottom; if you hold it inclined upward, so as to see objects behind your head, they will be reversed right for left. With these precautions you will find the mirror a great convenience for studying constellations which are nearly overhead. It is the principle of the “diagonal prism” employed with telescopes, and of the hand-mirrors used by many visitors at the Vatican Palace to view with comfort the ceiling pictures of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. Thus the sky becomes an atlas, and you can study its living charts at leisure. ROUND THE YEAR WITH THE STARS I THE EVENING SKY AT THE VERNAL EQUINOX The year has its morning no less unmistakable in its characteristic features than the dawn of the day. The earth and all of its inhabitants feel the subtle influences of the dawning year, and Nature awakes at their touch. This annual morning comes when the sun transits the equator, moving north, at the beginning of his long summer tour, about the 20th of March. This is the epoch of the Vernal Equinox, when the springs of life begin, once more, to flow. Then the sun truly rises on the northern hemisphere. Then the mighty world of the north, which Providence has made the chief abode of vital organisms on this planet, rouses itself and shakes off the apathy of winter, and men, animals, and plants, each after their manner, renew their activities, and in many cases their very existence. This annual reawakening is one of the profoundest phenomena of nature, and there are secrets in it which science has not yet penetrated. Bliss Carman has beautifully pictured the terrestrial charms of the vernal season in his “Spring’s Saraband”: