CHAPTEE XII. 



STELLAR DISTRIBUTION AND THE STRUCTURE 

 OF THE UNIVERSE. 



AFTER the death of Herschel there was little 

 done in the direction of furthering our knowledge 

 of stellar distribution, or the construction of the 

 heavens. Here, as elsewhere, Herschel's im- 

 mediate successor was his son, whose star-gauges, 

 both in England and in South Africa, were a 

 worthy sequel to those of his father ; but John 

 Herschel, in his books on astronomy, reproduced 

 his father's disc-theory, unaware that the elder 

 Herschel had himself abandoned it. The work of 

 the younger Herschel was entirely supplement- 

 ary to that of his father. 



To Wilhelm Struve belongs the credit of 

 showing the disc-theory to be untenable, and of 

 demonstrating that Herschel had abandoned it. 

 This he was able to do after a perusal of 

 Herschel's papers, presented to him by John 

 Herschel. Having demonstrated this, he under- 



