But to the first attempts of the amateur observer it affords no insignificant assistance, as I can aver from my own experience.

Without it--a superior finder being wanting--our "half-hours" would soon be wasted away in that most wearisome and annoying of all employments, trying to "pick up" celestial objects.
It behoves me at this point to speak of star-maps.

Such maps are of many different kinds.

There are the Observatory maps, in which the places of thousands of stars are recorded with an amazing accuracy.

Our beginner is not likely to make use of, or to want, such maps as these.