Excerpt from Astronomy Without a Telescope: A Guide to the Constellations, and Introduction to the Study of the Heavens With the Unassisted SightThe last quarter of a century has seen a striking increase in the size and efficiency of astronomical telescopes. These have opened up new fields of great interest; but in the widespread attention which they have attracted there is some danger lest it should be forgotten that there are fields for which the primary instrument of all, the unassisted human eye, is still available, and to which it alone is adapted, fields which even yet are far from being exhausted.I owe my own first recognition of the extent of the work in astronomy which there is still to be done without a telescope to the sight of the Zodiacal Light whilst passing through the Red Sea. The more I studied that object, the more I was impressed with its mysteriousness, and it was in the first place, in the hope of enlisting observers in its study, that I commenced in 1900 a series of short papers in Knowledge upon the Zodiacal Light and other objects which like it need no optical assistance for their examination. The subject has grown in the writing to far larger dimensions than I had in the least anticipated at first, and no doubt it might have been expanded to a much greater length still without exhausting it.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com