THE EVER-WIDENING WORLD OF STARS. 51 



multiplied forms of structure or of aggregation to be 

 found within its boundaries. As of late our concep- 

 tions of the wealth of the solar system have been 

 enhanced by the discovery of numberless new objects 

 and new forms of matter existing within its range, 

 and co-ordinating themselves in regular relations with 

 the earlier known members of the system, so we seem 

 now called on to recognise in the stellar world an un- 

 suspected wealth of material, a hitherto unrecognised 

 variety of cosmical forms, and an extension into regions 

 of space to which our most powerful telescopes have 

 not yet been able to penetrate. 



But now I would call attention to a peculiarity of 

 the southern skies which, while apparently affording 

 conclusive testimony in favour of the new views, has 

 unaccountably (in my opinion) been urged as an argu- 

 ment tending in quite another direction. There are 

 to be seen in those skies two mysterious clouds of light, 

 which were called by the first Europeans who sailed 

 the southern seas the Magellanic clouds, and are now 

 commonly spoken of by astronomers as the Nubeculge. 

 Examined by the powerful telescope of Sir John Her- 

 schel, these objects have been found to consist of small 

 fixed stars and nebulae, grouped together without any 

 evidence of special arrangement, but still obviously 

 intermixed, not merely seen projected on the same 

 field of view. 



These strange objects have given rise to many specu- 

 lations ; and among the definite views put forward 

 respecting them is one recently expressed in a most 



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