220 A CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN ASTRONOMY. 



than the least. All the nebulae hitherto dis- 

 covered, whether gaseous and stellar, irregular, 

 planetary, ring -formed, or elliptic, exist within 

 the limits of the Sidereal System." 



Proctor's discovery of the excess of bright stars 

 on the Galaxy was confirmed by Jean CJiarles 

 Houzeau (1820-1888), director of the Brussels 

 Observatory. Some time later J. E. Gore care- 

 fully examined the positions of all the brighter 

 stars in the northern and southern hemisphere. 

 Following this, he made an enumeration of the 

 stars in the atlas of Heis and in the charts 

 constructed by Harding ; the outcome of the in- 

 vestigation being to show that stars of each 

 individual magnitude taken separately tend to 

 aggregate on the Galaxy, the aggregation being 

 noticed even in first - magnitude stars. Gore 

 further pointed out many cases of close con- 

 nection between the lucid stars and the galactic 

 light. A similar investigation was undertaken 

 by Schiaparelli in 1889. Schiaparelli, basing his 

 work on the catalogue of Gould and the photo- 

 metric measures of Pickering, constructed a series 

 of planispheres which demonstrated the crowd- 

 ing of the lucid stars towards the plane of the 

 Galaxy. These investigations were still further 

 continued by Simon Newcomb, who demonstrated 

 that " the darker regions of the Galaxy are only 



