MILKY WAY. 145 



be ascribed to irresolvable nebulosity. A more careful ap- 

 plication ot're(lectin<r telescopes of great dimensions and pow- 

 er of lisiht has since proved, with more certainty, the cor 

 rectness of the conjectures advanced by Democritus and Ma- 

 nilius, in reference to the ancient path of Phaeton, that this 

 Qiiilky glimmering light was solely owing to the accumu 

 lated strata of small stars, and not to the scantily inter 

 spersed nebuhe. This ellusion of light is the same at points 

 where the whole can be perfectly resolved into stars, and 

 even in stars which are projected on a black ground, wholly 

 free from nebulous vapor.* It is a remarkable feature of 

 the Milky AYay that it should so rarely exhibit any globular 

 clusters and nebulous spots of a regular or oval form ;t while 

 both are met with in great numbers at a remote distance 

 from it ; as, for instance, in the Magellanic clouds, where 

 isolated stars, globular clusters in all conditions of condensa- 

 tion, and nebulous spots of a definite oval or a wholly irreg- 

 ular form, are intermingled. A remarkable exception to 

 the rarity of globular clusters in the Milky Way occurs in a 

 region between R. A. 16h. 45m. and 18h. 44m., between the 

 Altar, the Southern Crown, the head and body of Sagitta- 

 rius, and the tail of the Scorpion. $ We even find between 

 £ and of the latter one of those annular nebulae, which are 

 of such extremely rare occurrence in the southern hemi- 

 sphere. 



In the field of view of powerful telescopes (and we must 

 remember that, according to the calculations of Sir William 



* "Stars standing on a clear black ground."' {Observations at the 

 Cape, p.3!)l.) " This remarkable belt (the Milky Way, when exam- 

 ined through powerlul telescopes) is found (wonderful to relate !) to 

 consist entirely of stars scattered by millions, like glittering dust on the 

 )lack groitnd of the general heavens." — Outlines, p. 182, 537, and 539. 



t " Globular clusters, excepting in one region of small extent (be- 

 tween IGh. 45m. and 19h. in R. A.), and nebulae, of regular elliptic 

 forms, are comparatively rare in the Milky Way, and are found con- 

 gregated in the greatest abundance in a part of the heavens the most 

 remote possible from that circle." {Outlines, p. 614.) Huygens him- 

 self, as eai'ly as 1656, had remarked the absence of nebulosity and of 

 all nebulous spots in the Milky Way. In the same place where ho 

 mentions th 3 fust discovery and delineation of the great nebulous spots 

 in the belt of Orion, by a twenty-eight feet refractor (1656), he says 

 (as I have already remarked in vol. ii., p. 330, and note), viam lacteam 

 perspicillis inspectam nullas habere nebulas, and that the Milky Way, like 

 all that has been regarded as nebulous stars, is a great cluster of stars 

 The passage is to be found in Hngenii Opera varia, 1724, p. 540. 



X Observations at the Cape, 9 105, 107, and 328. On the annular uej|>- 

 ulae, No. 3686, see p. 114. 



Vol. III.- T 



