sun's apparent annual path through the stars. What it is nobody has
yet been able to find out with certainty, and books on astronomy
usually speak of it with singular reserve. But it has given rise to
many remarkable theories, and a true explanation of it would probably
throw light on a great many other celestial mysteries. The Milky Way
is a more wonderful object to look upon, but its nature can be
comprehended, while there is a sort of uncanniness about the Zodiacal
Light which immediately impresses one upon seeing it, for its part in
the great scheme of extra-terrestrial affairs is not evident.

If you are out-of-doors soon after sunset -- say, on an evening late
in the month of February -- you may perceive, just after the angry
flush of the dying winter's day has faded from the sky, a pale ghostly
presence rising above the place where the sun went down. The writer
remembers from boyhood the first time it was pointed out to him and
the unearthly impression that it made, so that he afterward avoided
being out alone at night, fearful of seeing the spectral thing again.
The phenomenon brightens slowly with the fading of the twilight, and
soon distinctly assumes the shape of an elongated pyramid of pearly
light, leaning toward the south if the place of observation is in the
northern hemisphere. It does not impress the observer at all in the
same manner as the Milky Way; that looks far off and is clearly among
the stars, but the Zodiacal Light seems closer at hand, as if it were
something more intimately concerning the earth. To all it immediately
suggests a connection, also, with the sunken sun. If the night is
clear and the moon absent (and if you are in the country, for city
lights ruin the spectacles of the sky), you will be able to watch the
apparition for a long time. You will observe that the light is
brightest near the horizon, gradually fading as the pyramidal beam
mounts higher, but in favorable circumstances it may be traced nearly