"
[Footnote 1: _Dark or gloomy coast_. This line was amusingly
rendered, by the printer of my "Saturn and its System," in which I
quoted Chaucer's lines, "Mine is the prison, and the dirty coat."]
[Footnote 2: _Churl's._ Notice this word. It is the same as the
word rendered _Charles's_ in the common English name for the
Dipper. One should always say Charles's Wain, not Charles' (as is
the way Tennyson does in the "May Queen ").]
For the present, however, let us consider the planet Mars, leaving
slow Saturn to wait for us another month.
It has always seemed to me one of the most useful lessons in astronomy
to follow the line by which, long ago, great discoveries were made.
Thus, if the young reader went out on every fine night and noted the
changing position of Mars, he traced out the track shown in Fig. 1.
He noted, also, that the planet, which shone at its brightest about
September 5, gradually grew less and less bright as it traveled off,
after rounding the station near October 5 (really on Oct.
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