[Illustration: HIPPARCHUS IN THE OBSERVATORY OF ALEXANDRIA.] THE STORY OF THE SUN, MOON, AND STARS BY AGNES GIBERNE AUTHOR OF “THE STARRY SKIES,” “THE WORLD’S FOUNDATIONS,” “RADIANT SUNS,” ETC. [Illustration] WITH COPIOUS ADDITIONS Fully Illustrated CINCINNATI NATIONAL BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY J. T. JONES. INTRODUCTION. BY CHARLES PRITCHARD, M. A., F. R. S., PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. The pages of this volume on a great subject were submitted to my criticism while passing through the press, with a request from a friend that I would make any suggestions which might occur to me for its improvement. Naturally, such a request was entertained, in the first instance, with hesitation and misgiving. But after a rapid perusal of the first sheet, I found my interest awakened, and then gradually secured; for the book seemed to me to possess certain features of no ordinary character, and, in my judgment, held out the promise of supplying an undoubted want, thus enabling me to answer a question which I have been often asked, and which had as often puzzled me, to the effect, “Can you tell me of any book on astronomy suited to beginners?” I think just such a book is here presented to the reader; for the tale of the stellar universe is therein told with great simplicity, and perhaps with sufficient completeness, in an earnest and pleasant style, equally free, I think, from inaccuracy or unpardonable exaggeration. We have here the outlines of elementary astronomy, not merely detailed without mathematics, but to a very great extent expressed in untechnical language. Success in such an attempt I regard as a considerable feat, and one of much practical utility. For the science of astronomy is essentially a science of great magnitude and great difficulty. From the time of Hipparchus, some century and a half before the Christian era, down to the present day, the cultivation of astronomy has severely taxed the minds of a succession of men endowed with the rarest genius. The facts and the truths of the science thus secured have been of very slow accretion; but like all other truths, when once secured and thoroughly understood, they are found to admit of very simple verbal expression, and to lie well within the general comprehension, and, I may safely add, within the sympathies of all educated men and women.