308 The Construction of the Heavens. [July, 
mass of the nation are content not to think on the subject, 
or has its time too fully occupied to do so, which has thus 
long delayed the introdution of the system into England. 
In this belief the present article has been written, in the 
hope that, by putting the matter in a plain, and, so to speak, 
everyday point of view, the thoughts of the public generally 
might be turned to the subjeét, which, in the writer’s 
opinion, would be sufficient to seal the fate of our present 
system for ever. 
Ill; THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HEAVENS: 
By Ricuarp A. Proctor, B.A., Cambridge ; 
Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society ; 
Author of ‘* The Sun,” ‘‘ Other Worlds,” &c. 
“A knowledge of the construction of the heavens has always been the ulti- 
mate object of my observations.”—Sir W. HERSCHEL (Pil. Trans. for 1811). 
(eS) 
‘ji, 1 may appear strange, but is nevertheless strictly true, 
a that though the name astronomy implies the science 
=> which deals with the laws of stellar distribution, yet 
astronomers as a body have given less attention to the dis- 
cussion of these laws, or, in other words, to the solution 
of the probiem of the construction of the heavens, than to 
any other department of their science. The observation of 
the stars has indeed occupied a large share of the labours 
of astronomers; but such observation has been directed to 
the exact determination of the position of individual orbs 
upon the vault of heaven. At the great public observatories 
the prosecution of such work—the importance of which, be 
it understood, I am very far from questioning—has been the 
object of many years of patient labour by many hundreds of 
skilful astronomers: catalogues in which star places are 
recorded by hundreds of thousands are now in existence, 
and the magnitude, colour, proper motion, annual parallax, 
and other relations of multitudes of stars have been care- 
fully recorded. But these labours have not been carried 
out for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the 
structure of the sidereal universe. ‘They have all related to 
the recognition and accurate placing of individual stars; and 
indeed it may be said, without exaggeration, that they have 
