of the Sun and fixed Stars. 6 g 
reasoning still remains in full force, with regard to the planets 
which these suns may support. 
In this place I may, however, take notice that, from other 
considerations, the idea of suns or stars being merely the sup- 
porters of systems of planets, is not absolutely to be admitted 
as a general one. Among the great number of very compressed 
clusters of stars, I have given in my catalogues, there are some 
which open a different view of the heavens to us. The stars 
in them are so very close together, that, notwithstanding 
the great distance at which we may suppose the cluster itself 
to be, it will hardly be possible to assign any sufficient mutual 
distance to the stars composing the cluster, to leave room for 
crowding in those planets, for whose support these stars have 
been, or might be, supposed to exist. It should seem, there- 
fore, highly probable that they exist for themselves ; and are, 
in fact, only very capital, lucid , primary planets, connected to- 
gether in one great system of mutual support. 
As in this argument I do not proceed upon conjectures, but 
have actual observations in view, I shall mention an instance in 
the clusters, No. 26, 28, and 35, VI. class, of my catalogue of 
nebulae, and clusters of stars. (See Phil. Trans. Voh LXXIX. 
Part II. p. 251.) The stars in them are so crowded, that I 
cannot conjecture them to be at a greater apparent distance 
from each other than five seconds ; even after a proper allow- 
ance for such stars, as on a supposition of a globular form of 
the cluster, will interfere with one another, has been made. 
Now, if we would leave as much room between each of these 
stars as there is between the sun and Sirius, we must place 
these clusters 42104 times as far from us as that star is from 
the sun. But in order to bring down the lustre of Sirius to 
