ust been precipitated.

[Illustration]

Other optical appearances of an analogous kind are manifested under
different conditions. Thus, for instance, if any one, turning his back
to the sun, looks into water, he will perceive the shadow of his head,
but always very much deformed. At the same time he will see starting
from this very shadow what seem to be luminous bodies, which dart
their rays in all directions with inconceivable rapidity, and to a
great distance. These luminous appearances--these aureola rays--have,
in addition to the darting movement, a rapid rotary movement around
the head.

[Illustration]

THE PLANET VENUS

BY AGNES M. CLERKE.

I.

HESPERUS AND PHOSPHOR.

[Illustration]

The radiant planet that hangs on the skirts of dusk and dawn

"like a jewel in an Ethiop's ear,"

has been known and sung by poets in all ages. Its supremacy over the
remainder of the starry host is recognized in the name given it by the
Arabs, those nomad watchers of the skies, for while they term the moon
"El Azhar," "the Brighter One," and the sun and moon together "El
Azharan," "the Brighter Pair," they call Venus "Ez Zahra," the bright
or shining one _par excellence_, in which sense the same word is used
to describe a flower. This "Flower of Night" is supposed to be no
other than the white rose into which Adonis was changed by Venus in
the fable which is the basis of all early Asiatic mythology. The
morning and evening star is thus the celestial symbol of that union
between earth and heaven in the vivifying processes of nature,
typified in the love of the goddess for a mortal.

The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, not unnaturally took the star,
which they saw alternately emerging from the effulgence of the rising
and setting sun, in the east and in the west, for two distinct bodies,
and named it differently according to the time of its appearance. The
evening star they called Hesperus, and from its place on the western
horizon, fabled an earthly hero of that name, the son of Atlas, who
from the slopes of that mountain on the verge of the known world used
to observe the stars until eventually carried off by a mighty wind,
and so translated to the skies. These divine honors were earned by his
piety, wisdom, and justice as a ruler of men, and his name long shed a
shimmering glory over those Hesperidean regions of the earth, where
the real and unreal touched hands in the mystical twilight of the