If you draw an imaginary line through the stars forming the belt and prolong it downwards slantingly, you will see, in the very height of winter, the brightest star in all the sky, either in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. This is Sirius, who stands in a class quite by himself, for he is many times brighter than any other first magnitude star. He never rises very high above the horizon here, but on crisp, frosty nights may be seen gleaming like a big diamond between the leafless twigs and boughs of the rime-encrusted trees. Sirius is the Dog Star, and it is perhaps fortunate that, as he is placed, he can be seen sometimes in the southern and sometimes in the northern skies, so that many more people have a chance of looking at his wonderful brilliancy, than if he had been placed near the Pole star. In speaking of the supreme brightness of Sirius among the stars, we must remember that Venus and Jupiter, which outrival him, are not stars, but planets, and that they are much nearer to us. Sirius is so distant that the measures for parallax make hardly any impression on him, but, by repeated experiments, it has now been proved that light takes more than eight years to travel from him to us. So that, if you are eight years old, you are looking at Sirius as he was when you were a baby! Not far from the Pleiades, to the left as you face them, are to be found two bright stars nearly the same size; these are the Heavenly Twins, or Gemini. Returning now to the Great Bear, we find, if we draw a line through the middle and last stars of his tail, and carry it on for a little distance, we come fairly near to a cluster of stars in the form of a horseshoe; there is only one fairly bright one in it, and some of the others are quite small, but yet the horseshoe is distinct and very beautiful to look at. This is the Northern Crown. The very bright star not far from it is another first-class star called Arcturus. To the left of the Northern Crown lies Hercules, which is only mentioned because near it is the point to which the sun with all his system appears at present to be speeding. For other fascinating constellations, such as Leo or the Lion, Andromeda and Perseus, and the three bright stars by which we recognize Aquila the Eagle, you must wait awhile, unless you can get some one to point them out. Those which you have noted already are enough to lead you on to search for more. Perhaps some of you who live in towns and can see only a little strip of sky from the nursery or schoolroom windows have already found this chapter dull, and if so you may skip the rest of it and go on to the next. For the others, however, there is one more thing to know before leaving the subject, and that is the names of the string of constellations forming what is called the Zodiac. You may have heard the rhyme: