Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, brilliant beauties that they are, have always been distinguished features of the heavenly view. The records of Mercury do not go back so far as those of these more easily seen planets, yet there is no reason to think that he has not been always known, though less widely, perhaps, than the four planets more frequently in view. To Uranus belongs the distinction of being the first planet that was _discovered_--a distinction that one cannot help but feel was too long delayed, for it did not come until 1781. For ages and ages his lovely pale beams had been shining down upon us from his little disc, no fainter in brilliancy than many a sixth-magnitude star (a degree of brightness which we think is within the limit of good vision, even in these days), and no human being had been conscious that this bright body was only another member of the solar family, circling with the rest of us around our parent, the sun, and having nothing in common with the far-off stars among which we had numbered him. Nineteen times he had been charted as a fixed star before his identity was suspected, and after he became known to us as a planet he was, by means of these charts, traced back for one hundred and thirty years, and much information was thus gained concerning his orbit and movements. Uranus was not, however, discovered through observation of his movement among the stars. A view of his actual disc was caught by the musician and astronomer, Herschel, as he gleaned with his telescope in that part of the sky where the planet lay, one hundred and seventy-one years after the invention of that aid to vision. It was at first thought that a comet had been discovered, but later investigation showed a much more important member of the solar system, and the discovery of a new planet was announced. George III. was then King of England, and the loyal Herschel called the planet _Georgium Sidus_ in honor of that monarch. Fortunately, the world-wide interest in this newly discovered body saved it from so local an appellation, and it finally came to be called after Uranus, the father of Saturn, a name somewhat more in keeping with its place among the planets. In England, however, a very commendable loyalty to Herschel has resulted in the planet’s sometimes being called Herschel, after its discoverer, and we see this name often in English books on astronomy, especially the older books; but Uranus is now the generally accepted name. The symbol of the planet as it appears in all almanacs--at least in all English almanacs--is a capital H with a planet swinging from the cross-bar in the letter, thus ♅. And to this extent the discovery of the planet by Herschel is commemorated. In American almanacs the symbol is contracted into this figure ♅.