NEBULJS. 325 



are, moreover, reckoned to belong to that zone of very large, 

 and probably less remote stars, whose prolonged direction 

 indicates the vast circle of the Southern Galaxy, passing 

 through e Orionis and a Crucis.* 



The opinion which at one time prevailed so extensively* 

 of the existence of a galaxy of nebula intersecting the stellar 

 Milky Way almost at right angles, has not been confirmed by 

 more recent and accurate observations in reference to the 

 distribution of symmetrical nebulae in the firmament.* There 

 certainly are, as has already been observed, veiy great accu- 

 mulations at the northern pole of the Galaxy, while a very 

 considerable abundance of nebulous matter is also observed 

 at the south galactic pole near Pisces; but in consequence of 

 the many interruptions which break the zone, we are unable 

 to indicate any large circle connecting these poles together, 

 and formed by a continued line of nebula?. William Her- 

 scliel, in advancing this view in 1 784, at the close of his first 

 treatise on the structure of the heavens, developed it with a 

 cnution worthy of such an observer, and from which doubt 

 was not entirely excluded. 



Some of the irregular, or rather unsymmetrical nebula3 



68 Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 199. Outlines, 785. 



89 Cosmos, vol. i. p. 141 and note; Sir John Herschel's 

 first edition of his Treatise on Astronomy, 1833, in Lardners 

 Cabinet Cyclopaedia^ 616; Littrow, Theoretische Astro- 

 nomic, 1834. th. ii. 234. 



60 See Edinburgh Review, January, 1848, p. 187, and 

 Observations at the Cape, 96, 107. "The distribution of 

 the nebulaB is not like that of the Milky Way," says Sir John 

 Herschel, " in a zone or band encircling the heavens ; or if 

 such a zone can be at all traced out, it is with so many inter- 

 ruptions, and so faintly marked out through by far the greater 

 part of its circumference, that its existence as such can be 

 hardly- more than suspected." 



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