This is the way the spring begins: First Aries, then Taurus, then the Heavenly Twins. The first summer sign is the one we call Cancer; The next two to Leo and Virgo will answer. Then autumn brings Libra and bright Scorpio, And next Sagittarius, with his strong bow. Capricornus then ushers the winter in, And near old Aquarius the year we begin. Pisces comes next, and then winter is done; And with Aries’s approach, a new spring is begun. These are the _signs_; but bear this well in mind: The sun lags in one constellation behind. When his place is Aries, we’ll find him in Pisces; When in Taurus he should be, in Aries he stays. If Gemini’s his place, and to find him our wish is, We must look back in Taurus to see his bright rays. And so through the year, whatever his place is, The bright group behind is the one that he graces. X MERCURY While Mercury is one of the five planets that can be seen with the naked eye, it must be confessed that he does not play any important part in the great spectacle of nature as we see it in the skies. But in a certain way this only adds to our interest in him. The very rarity of his appearances and the difficulty of finding him give a zest to the search, and a sense of achievement, when it is successful, that one does not have with regard to the other planets. It is something akin to the feeling one has when, after a long tramp to some secluded recess in the woods in search of the shy pink lady’s slipper, a splendid specimen of that lovely flower suddenly comes into view hanging gaily on its stalk, ready for the use of whatever fairy foot may tread its shady groves. Then, too, the spring o’ the year is the most likely time to see Mercury in the evening sky. He comes into his best position for this view of him just when the evenings are growing longer and milder and one begins to hunger for outdoor things, so that the quest of him at that time has the gladness that goes with our first excursions into the open after a winter’s housing, whether it be in search of flowers, or birds, or stars, or simply the general loveliness of everything that belongs to the beginning of the outdoor season.