252 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL 



is excellent, and accords perfectly with my most vivid 

 Peruvian recollections. It is to the arduous exertions of the 

 same astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope in 1837, that 

 we owe the first accurate analysis of these wonderful aggre- 

 gations of the most various elements ( 445 ). He found therein 

 single scattered stars in great number ; groups of stars and 

 globular star-clusters ; and both regular oval, and irregular 

 amorphous nebulae, more closely crowded than in the 

 nebular zone of Virgo and Coma Berenicis. Prom the 

 complex character of the nubeculae, therefore, they ought 

 not to be regarded either (as is too often done) as extra- 

 ordinarily large nebulae, or as detached portions of the 

 Milky Way. In the Milky Way, round star-clusters, and 

 more especially oval nebulae, are extremely rare phaenomena 

 ( 446 ), excepting in a small zone situated between the con- 

 stellation of Ara and the tail of Scorpio. 



The Magellanic clouds are neither connected with each 

 other nor with the Milky Way by any perceptible nebulous 

 appearance. The smaller nubecula is situated in what, ex- 

 cepting the vicinity of the star-cluster in Toucani ( 447 ), is a 

 kind of starless desert ; the larger Magellanic cloud is in a 

 less scantily furnished part of the celestial vault. The 

 structure and internal arrangement of the larger nubecula 

 are so complicated, that masses are found in it (like No. 

 2878 of Herschel's Catalogue), in which the general form 

 and character of the entire cloud are exactly repeated. The 

 conjecture oi the meritorious Homer, of the nubeculae having 

 once been parts of the Milky Way, in which their former 

 places can still be recognised, is nothing more than a myth ; 

 nor is the assertion of a progressive motion or change of 

 position being perceptible in them from the time of Lacaille, 



