696 



THE UNIVERSE. 



We see that at the present time our means of investiga- 

 tion have given gigantic proportions to the field of science. 

 When the sidereal world was only explored with the naked 

 eye, the catalogues of stars compiled from antiquity up to 

 the Renaissance, from Hipparchus to Tycho-Brahe, only 

 made mention of about a thousand stars. In our days the 

 vault of heaven, seen through a telescope twenty feet long, 



253. The great Reflecting Telescope constructed by Lord Rosse. 



is found, according to M. Struve, to contain more than 

 20,000,000 stars. 



But Sir W. Herschel pried yet more deeply into the mys- 

 teries of the heavens. By means of his telescope, forty feet 

 long, the Milky Way, this long white train which the Arabs 

 called the Heavenly River, has been resolved into a stellar 

 cloud, in which the English astronomer counted 18,000,000 

 telescopic stars. 



seen. We must therefore conclude that if we see nothing of this kind on our satel- 

 lite it is because its surface, formerly all flame and volcano, and now all ice, did 

 not or does not contain anything of the kind. 



