of the bright Fixed Stars. 333 
_ These stars, or, more strictly speaking, this excess of stars, 
1 in question, must be deducted from our total 
Tough ones of the Durchmusterung are by no means discord- 
ant, and that the distribution of the fixed stars, up to the 9th 
Magnitude inclusive, is not merely tolerably uniform but ap- 
proximately such that the number of stars doubles for each 
successive half-magnitude. The distance corresponding to the 
9th magnitude is from thirty-two to forty times that of the faint- 
est firs itude star; and the light-ratio between stars differ- 
ing by a single magnitude becomes 0°3968. This is very close 
to the ratio 0-4, which photometric researches have seemed to 
Indicate as best expressing the actually existing scale, and which 
1s the value usually ace . Did we adopt precisely this ratio, 
we should find 315 as the total number of stars as bright as the 
th magnitude, being only ten more than was given by the 
value just considered, while the computed numbers for all other 
magnitudes below the ninth would be brought somewhat nearer 
