PORTION OP THE COSMOS. -NEBULAE. 241 



only be accurately discerned by means of such large tele- 

 scopes as that which I employ. In the sword of Orion, 

 astronomers enumerate three stars placed very near to each 

 other : as, in the year 1656, I happened to be looking 

 through my telescope at the middle one of the three, I saw, 

 instead of a single star, twelve, which, indeed, with telescopes 

 is nothing extraordinary. Of these stars, three appeared 

 almost in contact, and four others shone as through a bright 

 haze, so that the space around them, as drawn in the accom- 

 panying figure, appeared much lighter than the rest of 

 the sky. It happened to be very clear, and was quite dark, 

 so that the appearance was as if there were an opening or 

 interruption (hiatus). I have seen all this repeatedly since, 

 and that up to the present time, so that this wonderful 

 existence, whatever it may be, has probably always its seat 

 there. I never saw anything similar in any other of the 

 fixed stars/' (It would seem, therefore, that the nebula 

 in Andromeda, described 54 years earlier by Simon Marius, 

 was either unknown to Huygens, or had excited but little 

 interest in his mind !) " Whatever other objects have been 

 called nebulae," he adds, " and even the Milky Way when 

 looked at through telescopes, show nothing nebulous, and 

 are merely multitudes of stars crowded together in clusters" 

 ( 42 ). The animation and vivacity of this first description 

 testify the magnitude and freshness of the impression pro- 

 duced ; but how vast is the difference which separates this 

 first graphical representation made in the middle of the 17th 

 century, and those, a little less imperfect, of Picard, Le 

 Gentil, and Messier, from the fine drawings of Sir J. Herschel 

 (1837), and of William CranchBond, Director of the Obser- 

 vatory of Cambridge in the United States in 1848 ! ( 421 ). 



