THE CONDENSED NEBELOUS MATTER. 243 



mass, must have been acting on all masses, and that hence 

 the existence of masses not aggregated would be a fact 

 calling for explanation. Thus, granting the immediate 

 conclusions suggested by these recent disclosures of the 

 six-feet reflector, the corollary which many have drawn is 

 inadmissible. 



But we do not grant these conclusions. Receiving them 

 though we have, for years past, as established truths, a 

 critical examination of the facts has convinced us that they 

 are quite unwarrantable. They involve so many manifest 

 incongruities, that we have been astonished to find men of 

 science entertaining them even as probable hypotheses. 

 Let us consider these incongruities. 



In the first place, mark what is inferable from the dis- 

 tribution of nebulae. 



" The spaces which precede or which follow simple nebulos," 

 Bays Arago, " and, d, fortiori^ groups of nebulae, contain generally 

 few stars. Herschel found this rule to be invariable. Thus, 

 every time that, during a short interval, no star approached, in 

 virtue of the diurnal motion, to place itself in the field of his mo- 

 tionless telescope, he was accustomed to say to the secretary who 

 assisted him, ' Prepare to write ; nebulce are about to arrive.' " 



How does this fact consist with the hypothesis that ne- 

 bulae are remote galaxies ? If there were but one nebula, 

 it would be a curious coincidence were this one nebula so 

 placed in the distant regions of space, as to agree in direc- 

 tion with a starless spot in our own sidereal system. If 

 there were but two nebulae, and both were so placed, the 

 coincidence would be excessively strange. What, then, 

 shall we say on finding that there are thousands of nebulsB 

 so i^laced ? Shall we believe that in thousands of cases 

 these far-removed galaxies happen to agree in their visible 

 positions with the thin places in our own galaxy ? Such a 

 belief is next to impossible. Still more manifest does the 

 impossibility of it become when we consider the general 



