160 SCENERY OF THE HEAVENS. 



of the South Pole. It then takes a northerly direction, and divides into two branches 

 before again passing the ecliptic into the northern hemisphere. The eastern branch 

 streams over the bow of Sagittarius, through Aquila and part of Cygnus. The western 

 branch passes over the tail of Scorpio, the right side of Ophiucus to Cygnus. The two 

 branches unite in that constellation, and pass on to Cepheus, the point from whence we 

 started, where the stream has its greatest breadth for a considerable space. 



By some of the pagan philosophers the Via Lactea was regarded as an old disused path 

 of the sun, of which he had got tired, or from which he had been driven, and had left 

 some faint impression of his glorious presence upon it. Its stellar composition was 

 however suspected long before it was proved, but its multitudinous host of stars remained 

 a secret till Herschel turned his mighty instrument at Slough upon the silvery belt. In a 



single spot he counted between five and six 

 hundred without moving his telescope ; and 

 in a space of the zone not more extensive 

 than 10 long by 2J wide, he computed 

 that there were no fewer than 258,000. 

 " What Omnipotence ! " was the involuntary 

 exclamation of Schroeter of Lilienthal, upon 

 examining a part of the same magnificent 

 girdle. It is not easy to convey to popular 

 apprehension tfye opinion generally held by 

 astronomers respecting the cause of this 

 singular and lucid tract, but the following 

 statement will perhaps be sufficiently intel- 

 ligible. It is conceived on good grounds 

 that all the stars in the universe are ar- 

 ranged in clusters or groups, each of which 

 may have millions of constituents, and that 

 the Milky Way is the remote and elongated 

 part of our cluster or group, to which all 

 the visible stars belong, forming one of many thousands of starry schemes or nebulas which 

 the firmament exhibits, as we shall hereafter see. It is a fair supposition, that stars whicli 

 are classed as belonging to the inferior orders of magnitude only appear to be so generally 

 because of their greater distance. Now it is observable, that those of the superior magni- 

 tudes are pretty equally distributed through the sky, and those of the inferior appear in 

 crowds towards the margin of the Milky Way, while that zone is plainly demonstrated to 

 be an enormous aggregation of the smaller sizes. The theory has therefore presented 

 itself, that the stars of our firmament are the constituents of a layer, comparatively thin, 

 but extended to an immense distance, somewhat after the semblance of the top of a round 

 table, to use a homely illustration, or a millstone, or a cheese, the thickness of which is 

 vastly surpassed by its diameter. If our position therefore is towards the central regions 

 of this layer, we shall obviously see a great gathering of stars, agglomerated into one 

 mass, looking towards the circumference, forming an appearance answerable to that of the 

 Milky Way ; but looking along the surfaces of the layer, we shall see a far lesser number 

 of stars, appearing also more distinct and scattered, answering to the aspect of the other 

 parts of the heavens. Supposing likewise the layer, on one side, to be split down the 

 middle, the appearance in that direction will be that of the Milky Way, divided through 

 a certain extent into two branches. The diagram may help to illustrate this view of 

 the architecture of the visible stellar universe, and our own place in it, occupying a 

 space in the neighbourhood of the sun at S. Sir John Herschel, after visiting the 



