dicating that these stars are
connected in orbital revolution, yet no one can look at them without
feeling that they are intimately related to one another. It is a sight
to which one returns again and again, always with undiminished pleasure.
The most inexperienced observer admires its beauty, and after an hour
spent with doubtful results in trying to interest a tyro in double stars
it is always with a sense of assured success that one turns the
telescope to beta Cygni.

Following up the beam of the imaginary cross along the current of the
Milky Way, every square degree of which is here worth long gazing into,
we come to a pair of stars which contend for the name-letter chi. On our
map the letter is attached to the southernmost of the two, a variable of
long period--four hundred and six days--whose changes of brilliance lie
between magnitudes four and thirteen, but which exhibits much
irregularity in its maxima. The other star, not named but easily
recognized in the map, is sometimes called 17. It is an attractive
double whose colors faintly reproduce those of beta. The magnitudes are
five and eight, distance 26", p. 73 deg.. Where the two arms of the cross
meet is gamma, whose remarkable _cortege_ of small stars running in
curved streams should not be missed. Use the lowest magnifying power.

At the extremity of the western arm of the cross is delta, a close
double, difficult for telescopes of moderate aperture on account of the
difference in the magnitudes of the components. We may succeed in
dividing it with the five-inch. The magnitudes are three and eight,
distance 1.5", p. 310 deg.. It is regarded as a binary of long and as yet
unascertained period.

In omicron^2 we find a star of magnitude four and orange in color,
having two blue companions, the first of magnitude seven and a half,
distance 107", p. 174 deg., and the second of magnitude five and a half,
distance 358", p. 324 deg.. Farther north is psi, which presents to us the
combination of a white five-and-a-half-magnitude star with a lilac star
of magnitude seven and a half. The distance is 3", p. 184 deg.. A very
pretty sight.

We now pass to the extremity of the other arm of the cross, near which
lies the beautiful little double 49, whose components are of magnitudes
six and eight, distance 2.8", p. 50 deg.. The colors are yellow and blue,
conspicuous and finely contrasted. A neighboring double of similar hues
is 52, in which the magnitudes are four and