From Lepus we pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no hope of our being able to see the companion of α (Sirius), at present (1894), even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with

an eighteen-inch telescope in 1863, when its distance was 10" from the center of Sirius, this ninth-magnitude star has since been swallowed up in the blaze of its great primary. It at first slightly increased its distance, and from 1868 until 1879 most of the meas-