S47 



him back a supply of those rays, otherwise let his stock 

 fee ever so great, it must be exhausted. 



10. It is commonly supposed that the fixed stars are 

 so many suns, shining with their own light : arid that 

 each of them has a set of planets moving round Jt : as 

 the earth, and the other planets do round our sun. It 

 may be so, or it may not ; for we know nothing about 

 them : nor is it possible we should know more. For 

 even when viewed with the best telescopes, they appear 

 no larger than they do to the naked eye. They are di- 

 vided, according to their size, into stars of the first, se- 

 cond, and so on to the sixth magnitude. 



Even a good eye seldom sees more than a hundred 

 stars at a time, in the clearest heaven. The appearance* 

 of vast numbers in winter nights, is a mere deception of 

 our sight, occasioned by our viewing them confusedly, 

 not in any regular order. 



Yet are they really almost infinite. For a good tele- 

 scope directed to almost any part of the heavens, dis- 

 covers numbers unseen by the naked eye, particularly in. 

 the milky way : which is indeed nothing else but an as- 

 semblage of stars, too remote to be seen singly, btit so 

 close to each other, as to give that brightness to so large 

 a part of the heavens. 



There are six or seven of these nebulous stars, as they 

 are called. They are indeed compound stars, consisting 

 of multitudes of single ones. In some of these appears 

 a bright lucid part, in which some stars appear, as from 

 a white cloud, and these are reckoned to be regions 

 of a peculiar nature, enjoying an uninterrupted, ever- 

 lasting day. 



The seven stars so called, probably were seven once ; 

 but one of them became extinct, even before the time of 

 Augustus Cxsar : and no more than six have appeared 

 ever since. But these, likewise, when viewed tlnough a 

 good telescope, are more than can easily be numbered. 



A hundred and twenty-five years before Christ, Hip- 



M 3 



