MOVEMENTS IN THE STAR-DEPTHS. Jl 



band of conspicuous stars which extends over the 

 Greater Dog, Orion, the Bull, Perseus, and Cassiopeia. 

 Still further, he reasoned that if the sun is circling 

 around the central orb, this body must lie on a line 

 square to the sun s path ; so that if we imagine a line 

 extending from the point in the heavens from which 

 the sun is travelling to the point towards which he is 

 travelling, then the central orb must lie somewhere on 

 or near to a plane through the sun and square to that 

 line. Now such a plane would cut the Milky Way in 

 two places, one in the northern heavens in Perseus, the 

 other in the southern heavens between the Altar and 

 the Centaur. Madler further indicates reasons for 

 believing that the centre of the sidereal universe lies 

 towards the northern region of the Milky Way. Lastly, 

 seeing that not far from the northern region there is a 

 remarkable star cluster, the Pleiades, he was led to 

 examine the region around the Pleiades for those signs 

 which he thought likely to exist towards that part of the 

 heavens where lies the centre of the sidereal universe. 

 We do not enter here into a consideration of the reason 

 ing which led Madler to conclude that in that part of 

 the heavens the stars would all appear to be moving in 

 the same general direction, for they are rather recondite. 

 That, however, was his anticipation ; and as he found 

 that the stars in the constellation Taurus are nearly all 

 moving southwards, he was satisfied that he had not 

 been mistaken in setting the Pleiades as the central 

 region of the universe, and the star Alcyone, the 



