14 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



the power of the great Kosse telescope as among the 

 most fantastic of the celestial cloudlets. While lastly, 

 long irregular streamers and wisps of cloudy light, 

 seemingly shapeless and unintelligible, would be seen in 

 those regions of the heavens where now are seen the con- 

 stellations Orion and Argo, the Swan and the Archer. 



It was these wonderful objects which led Sir W. 

 Herschel to propound the noblest theory of the 

 universe which the world had yet known, or rather 

 (for Lambert and Kant had, in some respects, antici- 

 pated Herschel's theoretical considerations), the noblest 

 theory which men had yet attempted to place on an 

 observational basis. He recognized in many of these 

 seeming cloudlets galaxies like our own, like that 

 wonderful scheme of stars the glories of which he had 

 himself laboured to make known to us. In fact, he 

 called certain of these objects Milky Ways, remarking 

 that many of them ' cannot well be less, and are 

 probably much larger, than our own star-system ; and 

 being also extended, the inhabitants of the planets 

 which attend the stars which compose them must like- 

 wise perceive the same phenomena [that we do]. For 

 which reason these nebulae may be called Milky Ways 

 by way of distinction.' 



This conception of more star-systems than the one of 

 which our sun is a member is unspeakingly impressive. 

 We are altogether unable, indeed, to form any adequate 

 idea of the relations which we express easily enough in 

 words. There are many ways of presenting the con- 

 siderations dealt with by Sir W. Herschel, and yet 



