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Having completed our survey of that small section of the universe in which we have our dwelling, our next task is to fly in imagination to those distant parts of space occupied by the thousands of stars which stud our sky. This is the field of astronomy in which the most wonderful discoveries have been made in recent times. We now know things about many stars which, even to such an observer as Sir William Herschel, would have seemed far beyond the possibilities of human ken. But the very vastness of the field and the minuteness of the details into which recent research has gone render it impossible to undertake anything like a comprehensive survey within the limits of the present little book. All we can do is to point out the more salient features of the universe of stars as they have been brought to light by observers and investigators of the past and present. The reader who desires further details and a wider idea of the methods and results of recent research relating to the stars may find them in a volume which the present author has recently devoted to the subject.^[1]

From the childhood of the race men have inquired: "What is a star?" To this question no answer was pos-