Milky Way. 327 



the constellations which it traverses. He likewise makes 

 us acquainted with the greater number of the explanations 

 which have been given of this imposing phenomenon. These 

 fruits of Grecian fancy, and such as it may be possible to col- 

 lect from the other writers of antiquity, do not deserve, in 

 the present day, the honour of a serious examination. Of 

 what importance is it to science — I might almost say of what 

 importance is it to the history of science — that Aristotle has 

 said of the Milky Way, *' that it is a luminous meteor, situ- 

 ated in the middle region .?" Does any one desire to know 

 that they have gone the length of seeking for the origin of 

 this immense whitish girdle in the drops of milk which the 

 infant Hercules let fall from the breast of Juno ;* and in the 

 burnt track which was left behind by the chariot of Phaeton, 

 or by some star suddenly darting, in former times, from its 

 ordinary place, and shooting across space ? Must we re- 

 mind the reader that CEnopides and Metrodorus believed 

 that the Milky Way is the route which the sun anciently 

 abandoned, as it approached its present zodiacal course, and 

 to which it was confined a sufficient length of time to leave 

 indelible marks of its passage \ From the time that comets 

 have irretrievably broken in pieces the solid spheres to which 

 the ancients attributed such an important part in the me- 

 chanism of the universe, no more attention has been paid to 

 an often cited passage of Macrobius ; a passage in which this 

 author informs us that Theophrastus regarded the Milky 

 Way as the line where the two hemispheres, which, accord- 



* When the great Cond^ confined himself to milk as his sole nourishment, 

 a poet of the day, enumerated in Latin verse the true or imaginary proper- 

 ties of the precious liquid. Fontenelle translated the piece of P. Commire. 

 I shall here quote the verses relating to the Mlky "Way. 

 Voyez ces astres dont a peine 

 II parvient jusqu' a nous un faible lueur : 

 C'est la ce meme lait qui tomba par malheur 

 De la bouche du fils d'Alcmene : 

 Et comme il efit ii6 perdu, 

 Jupiter me'nagea ces pr^cieuses gouttes : 



En astres il les changea toutes, 

 Et du Ciiemin de Lait voila ce qu'on a su. 



