36 COSMOS. 



the Galaxy (fully 15°), still even it may perhaps helong to 

 that prolongation of its branch which appears to lose itself 

 from a and e Persei toward Aldebaran and the Hyades, and 

 to which we have already referred at p. 147. The brilliant 

 stars which gave early celebrity to the constellation of Orion, 

 are, moreover, reckoned to belong to that zone of very large 

 and probably less remote stars, whose prolonged direction in- 

 dicates the vast circle of the Southern Galaxy, passing through 

 e Orionis and a Crucis.=^ 



The opinion which at one time prevailed so extensivelyf 

 of the existence of a galaxy of nehulcB intersecting the stellar 

 Milky Way almost at right angles, has not been confirmed by 

 more recent and accurate observations in reference to the dis- 

 tribution of symmetrical nebulse in the firmament 4 There 

 certainly are, as has already been observed, very great ac;cu- 

 mulations at the northern pole, of the Galaxy, while a very 

 considerable abundance of nebulous matter is also observed 

 at the south galactic pole near Pisces ; but in consequence of 

 the many interruptions which break the zone, we are unable 

 to indicate any large circle connecting these poles together, 

 and formed by a continued line of nebulae. William Her- 

 schel, in advancing this view in 1784, at the close of his first 

 treatise on the structure of the heavens, developed it with a 

 caution worthy of such an observer, and from which doubt 

 was not entirely excluded. 



Some of the irregular, or, rather, unsymmetrical nebulae 

 (as those in the sword of Orion, near r] Argus in Sagittarius 

 and in Cygnus), are remarkable for their extraordinary size ; 

 others (as Nos. 27 and 51 of Messier's Catalogue) for their 

 singular forms. 



It has already been noticed in reference to the large nebula 

 in the sword of Orion, that Galileo never mentioned it, al- 

 though he devoted so much attention to the stars between the 

 girdle and the sword, § and even sketched a map of this re- 



* Cosmos, vol. iii., p. 147. Outlines, $ 785. 



t Cosmos, vol. i., p. 150, and note ; Sir John Herschel's first edition 

 of his Treatise on Astronomy, 1833, in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia, 

 $ 616; Littrow, Theoretische Astronomic, 1834, th. ii., § 234. 



X See Edinburgh Review, January, 1848, p. 187, and Observations at 

 the Cape, § 96, 107. " The distribution of the nebulae is not like that 

 of the Milky Way," says Sir John Herschel, " in a zone or band en- 

 circling the heavens ; or if such a zone can bo at all traced out, it is 

 with so many interruptions., and so faintly marked out through by far 

 the greater part of its circumference, that its existence as such can be 

 hardly more than suspected." 



$ " There can be no doubt," writes Dr. Galle, " that the drawing'' 



