LABORATORIES OF THE UNIVERSE 139 



Construction of the Heavens, Herschel, with wider 

 views, a better instrument, and a clearer insight 

 into what he considered "the Laboratories of the 

 universe, wherein the most salutary remedies for the 

 decay of the whole are prepared," essayed a bolder 

 flight into a world of " things, unattempted yet in 

 prose or rhyme." Stars, clusters of stars, and nebulae 

 were the building stones, so to speak, out of which 

 Almighty Wisdom constructed the starry sphere 

 around our earth. How many of them exist, what 

 are their relations to each other, and how are they 

 arranged in space ? were some of the questions to which 

 he sought an answer. When he began the work of 

 observation, he " surmised that several nebulae might 

 yet remain undiscovered for want of sufficient light to 

 detect them. . . . The event has plainly proved that 

 my expectations were well founded; for I have 

 already found 466 new nebulae and clusters of stars, 

 none of which, to my present knowledge, have been 

 seen before by any person." Great though the dis- 

 covery was, it was only the beginning of others 

 still greater. These nebulae or little white clouds 

 were similar to the Milky Way in the colour of their 

 light, but apparently of immensely less extent. The 

 first known of them, properly so called, was that of 

 Andromeda, to which the attention of astronomers 

 was directed by Simon Marius in 1612. Others 

 were seen and recorded during the next century 

 and a half, but the Magellanic clouds were visible 

 to the naked eye and formed a striking spectacle 

 in the southern heavens. The Dutch, who saw them 

 in their voyages to India round South Africa, called 

 them the Clouds of the Cape. Astronomers were 



