Buried in the Milky Way, east of Lyra, lies the great “Northern Cross” in the constellation Cygnus. It is more perfect than the famous “Southern Cross,” and much larger. The star Alpha (α), at the head of the main beam of the cross, is also called _Denib_, the “Tail,” as it is situated in the tail of the “Swan,” Cygnus. Its parallax is undetermined, and Newcomb placed it in his “XM” class, described under Spica in Chapter I. The Milky Way is exceedingly beautiful in Cygnus. Note particularly the broad gaps and rifts in it. Around and above the head of the cross there are dark spaces, which are specially impressive when the eyes are partly averted from them. Downward from Cygnus the stream of the galaxy is seen to be partially split longitudinally. It resembles a broad river meandering, in the droughts of the “dog days,” over flats and shallows, and interrupted with long sand-bars. How can stars have been thrown together into such forms? What whirls and eddies of the ether can have made these _pools of shining suns_? The star in the foot of the cross, Beta (β), or _Albireo_--a beautiful name without signification, since Allen shows that it originated in a blunder (see his _Star Names and Their Meanings_)--is one of the most attractive objects in the heavens for those who are fortunate enough to possess a telescope. The smallest glass easily shows it to be double, and the combination is unrivalled for beauty, the larger star being a pale topaz and the smaller a deep sapphire. Their magnitudes are three and seven, and their distance apart about 34″. I have separated them with a field-glass. Cygnus contains one of the nearest stars in the sky, a twinkler not too easily seen with the naked eye--a striking proof of the fact that the mere faintness of a star is in itself no indication of excessive distance. This is known as 61 Cygni, and will be found on Chart X. It is a double, possible binary, easily separated with a small telescope, the distance being about 21″. The distance of 61 Cygni is about 40,000,000,000,000 miles. It was long known as the second nearest star in the sky, the nearest being Alpha Centauri in the southern hemisphere; but at least one nearer one has more lately been discovered, and it, too, is a very small star. The combined luminosity of the two stars in 61 Cygni is only one-tenth that of the sun. Amid so many giants it is reassuring to find a sun smaller than ours; it restores our self-esteem to find that our solar hamlet is not the very least in the empire of space.