THE CONDENSED NEBULOUS Itf ATTEE. 245 



ble point when compared with the distance of our Sun from 

 Sirius ; so is the distance of our Sun from Sirius, an inap- 

 preciable point when compared with the distance of our 

 galaxy from those far removed galaxies constituting nebulae 

 Observe the consequences of this assumption. 



If one of these supposed galaxies is so remote that ita 

 distance dwarfs our interstellar spaces into points, and there- 

 fore makes the dimensions of our whole sidereal system re- 

 latively insignificant ; does it not inevitably follow that the 

 telescopic power required to resolve this remote galaxy into 

 stars, must be incomparably greater than the telescopic 

 power required to resolve the whole of our own galaxy 

 into stars ? Is it not certain that an instrument which can 

 just exhibit with clearness the most distant stars of our own 

 cluster, must be utterly unable to separate one of these re- 

 mote clusters into stars ? What, then, are we to think 

 when we find that the same instrument which decomposes 

 hosts of nebulae into stavs, fails to resolve completely our 

 own Milky "Way ? Take a homely comparison. Suppose 

 a man surrounded by a swarm of bees, extending, as they 

 sometimes do, so high in the air as to be individually almost 

 invisible, were to declare that a certain spot on the horizon 

 was a swarm of bees; and that he knew it because he could 

 see the bees as separate specks. Astounding as the asser- 

 tion would be, it would not exceed in incredibility this which 

 we are criticising. Reduce the dimensions to figures, and 

 the absurdity becomes still more palpable. In round num- 

 bers, the distance of Sirius from the Earth is a million times 

 the distance of the Earth from the Sun ; and, according to 

 the hypothesis, the distance of a nebula is something like a 

 million times the distance of Sirius. 



Now, our own " starry island, or nebula," as Humboldt 

 calls it, " forms a lens-shaped, flattened, and everywhere 

 detached stratum, whose major axis is estimated at seven 

 or eight hundred, and its minor axis at a hundred and fifty 



