Before bringing these pages to a close, and appending to our description of Everyday Objects (everyday, but not commonplace) the word "Finis," we wish to direct the reader's attention to the subject of coloured stars; not because these beautiful spheres can be fairly classed under our general title, but because they serve to show the peculiar attractiveness and novelty of scientific inquiry, and the wonderful results that spring from the persevering study of God's universe. To the eye of the ordinary observer, one star seems much like another; these "lamps of night" differ, indeed, in brilliancy, in their distance from the earth, in their relative magnitudes; but to all appearance they exhibit a complete identity in physical constitution, and their white light has furnished poetry with one of its commonest images. But the astronomer, armed with his wonder-revealing glass, has discovered that innumerable stars are exquisitely coloured; that some are blue, and others green, and others red. If on a clear night you examine Perseus with your telescope, you will find that the star Eta is of a glowing red. In the system of Ophiuchus you will encounter a blue star; in that of Draco, a deep red star; Taurus has a large red and a small bluish star; and in Argo, a blue sun is attended by a dark-red satellite. The stars occur in double, triple, or multiple groups or clusters; and the systems so constituted differ from what we presumptuously call _the_ Solar System in their colouring; and in this variety or diversity, yet another variety is visible. The binary coloured systems are not all composed of blue and red suns. In that of Gamma Andromedæ the great central orb is of an orange hue, the moon revolving round it green as emerald. What results from the marriage of these two colours--from this union of orange and emerald? Do we not see in it, says a French astronomer,[94] a combination, if the phrase is allowable, full of youth (_assortiment plein de jeunesse_)--a grand, a magnificent orange-coloured sun in the midst of the firmament--next to it, a resplendent emerald, which interweaves with the gold its greenish gleams? The following lively picture is borrowed from the graphic pages of M. Flammarion. There is more variety, he says, in the innumerable star-systems which crowd the fields of space, than in all the changes which the most skilful opticians can project on the screen of a magic lantern. Some of the planetary universes lighted up by two suns display the entire gamut of colours above blue, but are without the sparkling tints of gold and purple which contribute so greatly to the luminosity of our world. In this category may be placed certain systems situated in the constellations of Andromedæ, the Serpent, Ophiuchus, and Coma Berenices. Others are illuminated by red suns, as, for example, a double star in Leo.