THE STABS AXD NEBULAE 295 



heavens rotated daily around our earth was such an il- 

 lusion. By parity of reasoning, the so-called vertices of 

 preferential motion are likewise the effect of identically 

 the same cause ; and so, likewise, is the locus of the solar 

 apex, as hitherto determined, apparent merely, and not 

 real. The true course of the sun is that of recession 

 (westward) from the celestial point of the vernal equinox 

 along the equinoctial colure; the latter 's length (186,- 

 000,000 miles) constituting an arc of about 50".2 of the 

 sun's orbit, having its concave side toward the position 

 of our earth in winter, and continually sinking toward 

 the Vertex, or gravitational pole of the ecliptic, at the 

 rate of some six miles per second. In attempting to 

 visualize this description and to truly appraise the il- 

 lusory character of these "streams" the reader is cau- 

 tioned to take into the reckoning the phenomenon of 

 precession at its face value, and not to discount it, as 

 astronomers now do, under the rulings of Newton's mis- 

 conception of its cause. The sun, under their conception, 

 should seem to tend toward R.A. 270 and Dec. +33.23, 

 but his actual path is as I have described. 



Generally speaking, the movements of stars are far 

 too slow, and the labor of ascertaining them in the first 

 instance, and of afterward piecing them together, far too 

 tedious and difficult, ever to make the general mapping 

 out of the stellar field into minor individual systems well 

 worth while or, perhaps, possible. Enough of this sort 

 of work has already been done, however, and more is now 

 in progress, to reveal the tendency of vast star-clusters 

 to arrange themselves into spiral conformations, indi- 

 cating the operation of some common cause. What, I 

 pray, can this cause be other than gravitation not cen- 

 tripetal attraction by itself, which logically should de- 

 stroy the isolated system (all the faster because of its 

 isolation), but that attraction in combination with the 

 stellar resultant reinforced by the equilibristic principle? 

 The clue to all such observed arrangements is to be found, 

 if at all, in first determining as nearly as can be from 

 observation the directions of the shortest axis and of the 



