DISTRIBUTION OF THE STABS. 187 



Milky "Way, but not that our telescopes have penetrated 

 to the boundaries of our stratum. " Every increase in the 

 power of our telescopes has hitherto disclosed new stars 

 in every part of the heavens ; it is therefore unphiloso- 

 phical to infer that such would not continue to be the 

 case if we could command a further increase of telescopic 

 power. It is, however, remarkable that those portions 

 of the heavens which are most remote from the Milky 

 Way are richest in nebulae and clusters of stars. In the 

 neighborhood of the north pole of the Milky Way, within 

 a region occupying about one eighth of the whole surface 

 of the sphere, one third of the entire nebulous contents of 

 the heavens are congregated. A large portion of these 

 nebulas have been resolved into clusters of stars, and 

 these stars, upon the principle that faintness is merely the 

 effect of distance, must be inferred to be as near to us as 

 the faintest stars of the Milky Way. 



On the whole, we must conclude that the stars, in every 

 part of the heavens, extend to a distance beyond the reach 

 of the most powerful telescope hitherto constructed ; that 

 therefore the shape of that portion of space which the stars 

 occupy is entirely unknown to us ; that within this space 

 the stars are not uniformily distributed, and are most 

 crowded in the neighborhood of a plane which we call 

 the Milky Way ; that out of this plane the stars exhibit a 

 great many centers of attraction, about which an immense 

 number of them are clustered ; but that the entire space, 

 so far as we can perceive, is studded, though more 

 sparsely, with stars. The material universe therefore ap- 



