Like Mercury, and for the same reason of a position interior to our orbit, Venus exhibits phases to us, appearing as a fully illuminated disc when she is furthest from the earth, as a half-moon at the two intermediate points of her orbit, and as a new moon when she is nearest to us. The actual proof of the existence of these phases was one of the first-fruits which Galileo gathered by means of his newly invented telescope. It is said that Copernicus predicted their discovery, and they certainly formed one of the conclusive proofs of the correctness of his theory of the celestial system. It was the somewhat childish custom of the day for men of science to put forth the statement of their discoveries in the form of an anagram, over which their fellow-workers might rack their brains; probably this was done somewhat for the same reason which nowadays makes an inventor take out a patent, lest someone should rob the discoverer of the credit of his discovery before he might find it convenient to make it definitely public. Galileo's anagram, somewhat more poetically conceived than the barbarous alphabetic jumble in which Huygens announced his discovery of the nature of Saturn's ring, read as follows: 'Hæc immatura a me jam frustra leguntur o. y.' This, when transposed into its proper order, conveyed in poetic form the substance of the discovery: 'Cynthiæ figuras æmulatur Mater Amorum' (The Mother of the Loves [Venus] imitates the phases of Cynthia). It is true that two letters hang over the end of the original sentence, but too much is not to be expected of an anagram. As a telescopic object, Venus is apt to be a little disappointing. Not that her main features are difficult to see, or are not beautiful. A 2-inch telescope will reveal her phases with the greatest ease, and there are few more exquisite sights than that presented by the silvery crescent as she approaches inferior conjunction. It is a picture which in its way is quite unique, and always attractive even to the most hardened telescopist.