146 Schroter' s Meteors, 



of arc, from 6h. 20m. till nearly 8h. p.m. is thus simply re- 

 corded — "what Omnipotence !" During that time upwards of 

 80 fields had passed before his eye ; but in not one of them, 

 even the least rich, was he able to number the multitude of stars. 

 Repeated estimation gave him never less than 50 or 60 at once; 

 frequently 150 and upwards ; 80 might be considered an aver- 

 age ; and this would give 1630 stars per square degree, or 

 48,900 in an extent of the galaxy 15° long and 2° broad. This 

 estimate gives a close agreement (of course, rather accidentally) 

 with the 50,000 of Herschel I. deduced with the 18-inch aper- 

 ture of his 20-foot reflector: and hence would follow Two 

 Millions for the whole circle of the galaxy. A more extended 

 comparison led Schroter to think that his telescope would reach 

 upwards of Twelve Millions in the whole compass of the sky. 

 Assuming an equality of reflective power for this speculum, and 

 that of the Earl of Rosse, we should either have for the large 

 telescope of the latter, about 170 millons of stars, or else be 

 obliged to suspect that we had passed 



"Extra flammaritia mcenia mundi," 



beyond the bounds of visible creation, and were able to gaze 

 out on blank and empty space. And though we have now 

 learned to distrust the formerly current assumption of equality 

 between our sun and those galactic stars, and consequently may 

 conjecture the possibility of a less extended boundary to our 

 telescopic range, yet we cannot help admiring the worthy old 

 Hanoverian when he tells us how the observer is " perpetually 

 finding in the apparently remotest confines of creation new and 

 certain traces of creative power extending itself indefinitely 

 further, and as it were a continually new reflection of the Deity 

 in his great works of nature. In astonishment he here adores 

 Infinite Omnipotence in these wonders, and longs for further 

 and greater discoveries from posterity.'" 



But to return. On June 28, 1795, after examining the more 

 than half illuminated moon with a power of 183 and a field of 

 15' in this great instrument, he was looking at a part of the 

 constellation Ophiuchus, and noting the continual passage of the 

 minutest stars through the field, 6 or 7 at a time, when an ex- 

 cessively delicate and faint point of greyish light, exactly like a 

 falling star at an extreme distance, passed downwards across 

 the field in about 1 second. It was not brighter or larger' than 

 the minute stars in the field, or than those in the galaxy, and 

 smaller than any previously known magnitude, not resembling 

 a meteor in our atmosphere, but probably flying in the expanse 

 of ether ; this latter according to the views of Schroter differ- 

 ing only from the atmosphere of the planets in its greater 

 rarity, and the absence of the exhalations arising from the 



