gravitational attraction and unusual outbursts of gases or electrical excitement in the atmospheres of the stars might cause very noticeable changes in the color of these stars as they drew nearer to each other, which would subside as they receded toward apastron. In addition to "visual" double or multiple stars, there exists a very extensive class of stars known as "spectroscopic binaries," in which the two components are so close to each other that even the most powerful telescopes cannot divide them. It is only from the shifting of the lines of their overlapping spectra, caused by their alternate motion toward and from the earth as they revolve about their common center of gravity, that their duplex nature is revealed to us. In some instances one member of the system is so faint that its spectrum is not visible and its presence is disclosed only by the shifting of the lines of the bright star. According to Doppler's Law, when a star is approaching the earth the lines of its spectrum shift toward the blue end of the spectrum, and when the star is receding from the earth the lines are shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. The amount of this shift can be very accurately measured, and gives the relative velocities of the stars in their orbits directly in miles per second. Knowing in addition, by observation, the period of mutual revolution of the stars, it is possible to find the dimensions of these spectroscopic binary systems compared to our own solar system, and also the masses of the stars compared to the mass of our own sun. If the spectrum of the fainter star is not visible, only the velocity of the brighter star with respect to the center of gravity of the system can be found and the mass found for the system comes out too small. In such cases we can obtain only a lower limit for the mass of the system. Then, too, it must be remembered that these systems of stars lie at all angles with reference to our line of sight, and so we rarely see the orbits in their true form. The measured velocities are as a result smaller than the true velocities, and on the average amount to only sixty per cent. of the true orbital velocities. The calculated masses of spectroscopic binary stars are, therefore, in general only about sixty per cent. of the true masses. It has been found from calculating the masses of a number of binary systems, that the combined masses of the stars in these systems do not differ very greatly among themselves, nor as compared to our own sun, though in light-giving power these stars may differ hundreds, thousands, even millions of times. For instance, there are stars that give only one ten-thousandth part of the light of our own sun, and other stars that give ten thousand times as much light as the sun. Moreover, there are many instances of physically connected stars differing thousands of times in luminosity, though in mass, or quantity of matter found in the stars, they differ only two or three times. Why this is so