THE STARS 327 



one a beautiful blue, one a brilliant green and one 

 a glowing yellow. With our eyes we could not live 

 upon a world revolving around three such suns as 

 those, could we? This world that we live upon with 

 its single sun, shedding upon us its pure, white hght, 

 is much better for us, — indeed it is the only world 

 for us, made as we are. To it God has adapted our 

 bodies, and we could not live on a world that was 

 quite different from this of ours. 



Some stars shine with a clear, white Hght, like 

 that of our sun, and those, they tell us, are all about 

 the same age. Others shine with a steely blue Hght, 

 and those are younger suns than ours, while others 

 stiU are yellowish or a dull red. Those are older 

 than our sun. Look at the stars on the next clear 

 night and see if you can find one that shines with a 

 reddish light, and one whose hght is bluish, and 

 others of which the light is pure white. 



The brightest and the largest star is Su-ius, or 

 the Dog Star, which we can see only during the 

 winter months. This star shines with a clear, white 

 light, but it is such an enormous sun that the light 

 it gives out is more than forty times as much as 

 that shed by our sun. But Snius is a younger sun 

 than ours, and in the ages to come it will shrink and 

 give less light and heat, for suns as well as planets 

 shrink as they grow older. 



Sirius is near Orion, the most brilliant constella- 

 tion, or group of stars, in our winter sky. Try to get 

 some one to point it out to you next winter, and to 

 tell you the story the Greeks told about the great 

 hunter Orion with his dog Sirius following him. In 



