Milkj/ Way. 29 



Before anal^'zing the immense labours of Herschel relative 

 to the Milky Way, I ought to draw attention to the fact that 

 three thinkers, if not three observers, had preceded him in 

 this career ; these are Wright of Durham, Kant, and Lambert. 

 A few words will be sufficient to shew that these three names 

 do not deserve the oblivion into which it has been the custom 

 to let them fall. 



I have been unable to procure Wright's memoir, and know 

 not even the title of it ;* but I find at the date of 1755, in 

 Kant's Theory of the Heavens, that the Durham savant rejected 

 all idea of a fortuitous and confused dispersion of stars, as 

 irreconcileable with the appearance of the Milky Way ; that 

 its aspect, on the contrary, led him " to admit a systematic dis - 

 position of the stars around a ground plane." 



Kant, in accordance with the quotation just given, completes 

 Wright's idea. He observes that the plane on both sides of 

 which the stars are grouped, must necessarily pass by the earth. 

 " In admitting,'' he adds, *' that the stars are nearer the plane in 

 question than the other regions of space, our eye, in plunging 

 into the starry plain, would believe that it perceives on the con- 

 tour of the apparent vault of the firmament, the ivhole of the 

 stars near the plane ; they will there form a zone which will be 

 distinguished from the rest of the heavens by a greater luminous 

 intensity. This zone of light will extend itself in a great 

 circle, since the eye of the observer is supposed to be in the 

 plane itself of the stratum of stars. The stars, finally, being 

 very small and very numerous, will not be distinguishable 

 one from another ; they will produce a confused light, of a 

 uniform whitish colour ; in other words, a milky way. 



Kant was well aware that, in his hypothesis, the appear- 

 ances of the starry heavens ought, to a certain point, to present 



* It has occurred to me at this moment to consult the recently printed 

 catalogue of the library of the Royal Society of London, and I find the fol- 

 lowing: * Wright (Thomas) Clavis codes: th ; being the explication of a 

 diagram entituled, A Synopsis of the Universe, or the Visible World Epito- 

 mized, 4to. London, 1742.' I do not know whether it is this book or that 

 which I find indicated in Lalande's biography, under the title. The T/uoiy of 

 the Universe, which Kant has cited. Both of tliem are anterior to the work 

 of the astronomer of Koenigsberg. 



VOL. XXXIII. NO. LXVr. OCTOBER 1842. Y 



