38 A CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN ASTRONOMY. 



by Herschel ; and in England the late R. A. 

 Proctor independently demonstrated the same 

 thing. Meanwhile, supposing Herschel had not 

 given up his theory, it would be quite untenable. 

 After considering the fact that the brighter stars, 

 down to the ninth magnitude, aggregate on the 

 Milky Way, Mr Gore says: "As the stars are 

 by hypothesis supposed to be uniformly dis- 

 tributed throughout every part of the disc, and 

 as the limiting circles for stars to the eighth and 

 ninth magnitudes fall well within the thickness 

 of the disc, there is no reason why stars of these 

 magnitudes should not be quite as numerous in 

 the direction of the galactic poles as in that of 

 the Milky Way itself. We see, therefore, that 

 the disc theory fails to represent the observed 

 facts, and that Struve and Proctor were amply 

 justified in their opinion that the theory is 

 wholly untenable, and should be abandoned." 



The observations made by Herschel himself 

 eventually proved fatal to the disc theory a 

 hypothesis which he had all along held very 

 lightly. His ideas about subordinate clusters 

 within the Milky Way were soon confirmed, and 

 though in 1799 he still adhered to the disc 

 theory, he wrote in 1802, "I am now convinced, 

 by a long inspection and continued examination 

 of it, that the Milky Way itself consists of stars 



