176 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
here it is also familiar as an object which may be seen at the antipodes, 
thus showing that it extends as a ring around the entire globe, following 
almost exactly a great circle of the heavens. This is the so-called milky 
way, which all astronomers tell us consists of tens of millions of separate 
stars, many of them probably equal to, and some of them larger than, our 
sun. Itis only necessary to look in the same direction on any clear summer 
night, as twilight is giving place to darkness, before the small stars are 
visible, to see that almost all the stars then visible lie in a long broad belt 
from Alpha Centauri to Orion. This is so striking that if you ask anyone 
what is the distribution of the stars, this feature cannot fail to be observed 
as a stream of stars. Wait a little longer and observe the milky way: one 
end of the stream of stars will be found to lie on it, but makes a very small 
angle with it. Agam the winter aspect of the milky way suggests exactly 
the same idea, with this striking addition, that parts appear to start away 
from the main ring in a series of streams frequently corresponding with 
sprays of stars. Again, Proctor says, ‘‘ that the stars of the first six orders 
are gathered into two definite regions, a northern and southern, so markedly, 
that the distribution of stars within these regions is richer than the distribu- 
tion over the rest of the heavens in the proportion of five to two.” Thus 
the mere naked-eye appearance of the heavens points to its being a definite 
system, and the older philosophic writers have often called attention to this 
fact. . Wright, Kant, Huygens, and many others expressed themselves 
strongly on the order of the heavens, and appear to have had no doubt of 
its being either one or more systems, and several have classified these 
systems into various orders, of which the visible universe does not appear 
necessarily to form the highest order. Kant says, speaking of the systems 
really known, ** we trace here the first terms of a series of worlds and systems, 
and these first terms of an infinite series enable us to infer the nature of the 
rest of the series.” But if the naked-eye view gives it the appearance of a 
definite system, it will be seen that telescopic observations demonstrate the 
fact. Sir J. Herschel, who studied star-distribution more that any other 
man, says that the mass of stars is generally flat, of small thickness. He 
also says, that the number of stars visible in his telescope in the-milky way 
number about eighteen millions, and about two millions in the remainder 
of the celestial vault. Struve published a list of stars in which he showed 
that in equal areas there were 4} at the poles of the galaxy to 122 in the 
galaxy itself. Herschel also says in another place—That beyond a certain 
magnitude all the stars lie in the milky way. There is another feature of 
the heavens which the telescope reveals to us, namely, the nebule at the 
poles of the galaxy, and the star-clusters in the galaxy itself. Mr. Cleve- 
land Abbe, from Herschel’s catalogues, says:—‘‘ Imagine a belt thirty 
