nowhere touching, inclined to the ecliptic.” It was soon ascertained that the ring had an inclination of 27° to the plane of its orbit, and as it with the planet revolves about the sun, its axis maintains the same absolute position; so that as the revolution is made once in every twenty-nine and a half years, every fourteen and three-fourth years its edge is directly toward the sun, and, practically, toward the earth (since the distance of the earth from the sun is comparatively small), and is invisible except through the most powerful telescopes. In like manner, every fourteen and three-fourth years the greatest possible portion of the ring’s surface is presented to the sun, and if the ring were perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s orbit, and its axis directed toward the earth, we should see the globe entirely girdled, instead of seeing, as we do, a large portion of one side of the ring and the opening only on two sides between it and the planet. After Huyghens, the discovery was made by an English astronomer named Ball, that instead of only one ring, Saturn had two rings, divided by a narrow, dark line, and that the inner ring was broader than the outer in about the ratio of seventeen to ten; that is, the breadth of the inner was estimated to be 17,000 miles, while that of the outer was only 10,300 miles. In 1850, Prof. Bond, of Cambridge, discovered a third ring lying between the inner ring and the planet. But this was hardly regarded as a discovery, as this ring had been “seen in England by Messrs. Lassell and Dawes, before it was formally announced by the Bonds;” and “something of the same kind had been seen by Dr. Galle, at Berlin, as far back as 1838.” Another perplexing question is, whether there are changes going on in these rings, and if so, what they are. Struve, in 1851, propounded the theory that the inner edge of the ring (or rings) was gradually contracting, and thus lessening the space between it and the planet, and this at the rate of about 1.3″ per century; at which rate it would close in on the planet about the year 2150—a date at such a distance that the event, should it transpire, will be of little moment to our readers. Another not yet satisfactorily answered question is, of what are these rings composed? The generally accepted answer at present is, that it is neither a solid nor a fluid ring, but a cloud of satellites, too small and too numerous to be seen singly. “They are like the separate little drops of water out of which are composed fogs and clouds, which, to our eyes, seem like solid masses.” URANUS