The minimum diameter of the visible disk considerably exceeds the maximum of that of Mars. Even with a low power it thus makes a beautiful and interesting telescopic object. Its distinctive aspect is that of a belted planet, the belts varying greatly in number and arrangement. As many as thirty have, on occasions, been counted, delicately ruling the disk from pole to pole. They are always parallel to the equator, but are otherwise highly changeable, and can not be too closely studied as an index to the planet’s physical constitution. Two in particular are remarkable. They are called the north and south equatorial belts, and inclose a lustrous equatorial zone. The poles are shaded by dusky hoods. This general scheme of markings, however, when viewed with one of the great telescopes of the world, is so overlaid with minor particulars as sometimes to be scarcely recognizable. One can not see the wood for the trees. Lovely color-effects, too, come out under the best circumstances of definition and aerial transparency. The tropical belts may be summarily described as red; but they are of complex structure, and their subordinate features and formations are marked out, under the sway of alternating and tumultuous activities, by strips and patches of vermilion, pink, purple, drab, and brown. The intermediate space is divided into two bands by a line, or narrow ribbon, pretty nearly coinciding with the equator, and rosy or vivid scarlet in hue. The polar caps are sometimes of a delicate wine-color, sometimes pale gray. Professor Keeler made an elaborate study of the planet with the Lick 36-inch in 1889, and executed a series of valuable drawings. With a power of 320, the disk, he tells us, “was a most beautiful object, covered with a wealth of detail which could not possibly be accurately represented in a drawing.” Most of the surface was then “mottled with flocculent and irregular cloud-masses. The edges of the equatorial zone were brilliantly white, and were formed of rounded, cloud-like masses, which, at certain places, extended into the red belt as long streamers. These formed the most remarkable and curious feature of the equatorial regions. They are the cause of the double or triple aspect which the red belts present in small telescopes.”