MOST of the articles in the following pages have been published during the last few years in The Gentleman's Magazine, Knowledge, The Observatory, etc., and my thanks are due to the editors and publishers of these periodicals for permission to re-publish them. The articles have been carefully revised and partly re- written, and the information brought up to date. The following articles have not been previously published, " The Ring Nebula in Lyra," "The New Star in Perseus," and "The Coming Comet." For the illustrations my best thanks are due to Professor Barnard, D.Sc. of the Yerkes Observatory (U.S.A.), M. Henry, of the Paris Observatory, and Dr. W. E. Wilson, F.R.S.

IN presenting the subject of Astronomy at Teachers' Institutes and similar gatherings, I have frequently been requested to recommend a handbook for ready reference by which one pursuing the subject without a teacher might not only learn the general facts of Astronomy, but also trace out the constellations and learn the mythological stories in connection with them. I know of several excellent books on the subject, but none containing this last-named feature and I decided to write one. I stated this fact to a Teachers' Institute (in Montgomery Co., Pa.), and stated also that, owing to other work in hand, I could not do this within a year, whereupon the teachers to the number of three hundred and forty-two sent in their names as advance subscribers, if I would prepare the book immediately. This request could not be ignored, and hence this booklet is issued a year sooner than intended by the writer.

During my connection with the University of Michigan as Professor of Astronomy I felt very much the want of a book written in the English language, to which I might refer the students attending my lectures, and it seems that the same want was felt by other Professors, as I heard very frequently the wish expressed, that I should publish an English Edition of my Spherical Astronomy, and thus relieve this want at least for one important branch of Astronomy. How ever while I was in America I never found leisure to undertake this translation, although the arrangements for it were made with the Publishers already at the time of the publication of the Second German Edition.

IN preparing and issuing this collection of essays and addresses, the author has yielded to what he could not but regard as the too flattering judgment of the publishers. Having done this, it became incumbent to do what he could to justify their good opinion by revising the material and bringing it up to date. Interest rather than unity of thought has determined the selection.

I HAVE tried to give in this book an outline of the history of astronomy from the earliest historical times to the present day, and to present it in a form which shall be intelligible to a reader who has no special knowledge of either astronomy or mathematics, and has only an ordinary educated person's
power of following scientific reasoning.

ASTRONOMY up to the present time has been chiefly on mathematical points and the mapping of the heavenly bodies, and more or less of the scientific points.

But this book is for the purpose of showing the origin of the Planets, their nature, and their working method, how they came into existence, what they
exist for, and to show that each and every one has a specific purpose ; that they do not merely exist or happen so, but that each and every one has a well-governed law that rules it the same as Man, and that they have a regular system wherein if they transgress that law they must suffer as well as you and I.

The endeavour to understand events in nature is as old as civilisation. In each of its three great seminal areas the Chinese, the Indian and the West Asian-European men tried to find a logic in the mysterious and an order in the chaotic. They made many attempts, sometimes revealing strange similarities in these totally different societies, to express general truths from which particular events would follow as rational, comprehensible consequences. They tried to describe and analyse in order to understand, for men could not live in the world without seeking to assign causes to the things that happen in it.