With reference to the colors of the stars, some of the red stars have been suspected to vary in color. The bright star Sirius is supposed--from the description of it by ancient astronomers--to have been originally red, but this seems very doubtful. The Persian astronomer Al Sufi, in his "Description of the Heavens," written in the tenth century, describes the well-known variable star Algol distinctly as a red star. It is now white, and this is perhaps the best attested instance on record of change of color in a bright star.--_Naturalists' Monthly._ THE COMMON DANDELION. By FREDERICK LEROY SARGENT. In the various names which the dandelion has received, we see expressed, for the most part, either a reference to the tooth-like recurved lobes of the leaves, Fig. 1, or an allusion to the medicinal properties of the plant. Thus, our English name is a modified form of the French _dent de lion_, meaning lion's tooth, and in German we have the same idea expressed in _Löwenzahn_. Fifty years ago this plant appeared in the botanies as _Leontodon taraxicum_, the generic name being derived from the Greek _leon_, lion, and _odons_, tooth, and the specific from the Greek _tarasso_, to stir up, in reference to the effect of a dose. In later works we find the genus _Leontodon_, including the "fall dandelion" (_L. autumnale_), but not the true dandelion, which now appears in a genus by itself under the name _Taraxicum Densleonis_. Here the specific name is merely "lion's tooth" again, in Latin. [Illustration: FIG. 1.] Finally, in the latest works our plant is given as _Taraxicum officinale_, since this has been found to be the name which, according to the rules of botanical nomenclature, takes precedence of all others. An allusion to the teeth is thus no longer retained, the only reference remaining being to the plant's officinal use. To the majority of people the mention of the dandelion calls to mind not so much its medicinal properties as its use for food. Although its cultivation, either as a spring pot herb or as a salad with blanched leaves, is comparatively modern, the wild plant seems to have been long valued as a vegetable. There is reason to believe that the Romans made use of it as a pot herb, and Chinese writers of the fourteenth century mention its being eaten in their country, although there is no evidence of cultivation at that time.