146 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



ter only, just as the earth is for the meteors that fall in 

 upon it. The garden of the sky, indeed, is crowded with 

 these umbels of forces carrying, perched on their stems, 

 their planetary efflorescences. Beyond that Vertex is 

 another far more distant, beyond that again, another 

 more distant still, and so on, rising higher and higher in 

 scale, and bearing upon their twigs systems, and upon 

 their branches systems of systems of worlds. To my 

 mind, the flatness and the well-proved depth of the disc of 

 the Milky Way eloquently testify that it is a gravitational 

 unit in a mightier invisible universe, invisible only be- 

 cause the light of its component stars is drowned in the 

 vast sea of space. As such a unit, of course, the Galaxy 

 should rotate around an axis in search of equilibrium, and 

 it appears that astronomers have already detected some 

 indications of such rotation! Underlying the whole 

 structural scheme of the macrocosm, as under the ham- 

 blest habitation of man, lies the great principle that New- 

 ton took such pains to eliminate EQUILIBRIUM. 



THE STAR STREAMS SO-CALLED 



The reader may infer from what has just been dis- 

 cussed that the star streams that Kapteyn was the first 

 to call attention to, may find their explanation in this 

 principle. Such is not my own opinion. This phenome- 

 non of star-streaming is, like the daily motion of the 

 heavens around our earth, illusory. It is only apparent. 

 It arises from a misguided attempt on the part of astron- 

 omers to generalize from data gained by observing 

 from one moving body another moving body with refer- 

 ence to a third moving body, all of whose velocities and 

 distances, relative and absolute, are highly conjectural, 

 and, in the case of the earth at least, misconstrued. No ! 

 whoever cares to play the role of skipper of this good 

 ship, Earth, and in imagination will take his stand at her 

 south pole and sail her around the sun's orbit a voyage 

 or two, watching the while the stars on shore, will soon 

 come to realize that the supposed streams are but the 

 optical effect of our change of position. 



