AND THEORY OF THE HEAVENS. 55 



not long since been moved by the character of this 

 perceptibly distinctive zone in the heavens, to deduce 

 from it special determinations regarding the position and 

 distribution of the fixed stars. For it is seen to occupy 

 the direction of a great circle, and to pass in uninter- 

 rupted connection round the whole heavens : two 

 conditions which imply such a precise destination and 

 present marks so perceptibly different from the indefinite- 

 ness of chance, that attentive astronomers ought to have 

 been thereby led, as a matter of course, to seek carefully 

 for the explanation of such a phenomenon. 



As the stars are not placed on the apparent hollow 

 sphere of the heavens, and as some are more distant 

 than others from our point of view and are lost in the 

 depths of the heavens, it follows from this, that at the 

 distances at which they are situated away from us, one 

 behind the other, they are not indifferently scattered on all 

 sides, but must have a predominant relation to a certain 

 plane which passes through our point of view and to which 

 they are arranged so as to be found as near it as 

 possible. This relation is such an undoubted pheno- 

 menon that even the other stars which are not included 

 in the whitish streak, are yet seen to be more accumulated 

 and closer the nearer their places are to the circle of the 

 Milky Way; so that of the two thousand stars which are 

 perceived by the naked eye, the greatest part of them 

 are found in a not very broad zone whose centre is 

 occupied by the Milky Way. 



If we now imagine a plane drawn through the starry 

 heavens and produced indefinitely, and suppose that all 

 the fixed stars and systems have a general relation in 

 their places to this plane so as to be found nearer to it 



