st star in the heavens, Cassiopeia, Perseus,
Cygnus, and Lyra with its bright-blue Vega, not to mention such
constellations as the Southern Cross, all lie in or near the Milky Way.
Schiaparelli has extended the investigation to all the stars visible to
the naked eye. He laid down on planispheres the number of such stars in
each region of the heavens of 5 degrees square. Each region was then
shaded with a tint that was darker as the region was richer in stars.
The very existence of the Milky Way was ignored in this work, though
his most darkly shaded regions lie along the course of this belt. By
drawing a band around the sky so as to follow or cover his darkest
regions, we shall rediscover the course of the Milky Way without any
reference to the actual object. It is hardly necessary to add that this
result would be reached with yet greater precision if we included the
telescopic stars to any degree of magnitude--plotting them on a chart
and shading the chart in the same way. What we learn from this is that
the stellar system is not an irregular chaos; and that notwithstanding
all its minor irregularities, it may be considered as built up with
special reference to the Milky Way as a foundation.

Another feature of the tendency in question is that it is more and more
marked as we include fainter stars in our count. The galactic region is
perhaps twice as rich in stars visible to the naked eye as the rest of
the heavens. In telescopic stars to the ninth magnitude it is three or
four times as rich. In the stars found on the photographs of the sky
made at the Harvard and other observatories, and in the stargauges of
the Herschels, it is from five to ten times as rich.

Another feature showing the unity of the system is the symmetry of the
heavens on the two sides of the galactic belt Let us return to our
supposition of such a position of the celestial sphere, with respect to
the horizon, that the latter coincides with the central line of this
belt, one galactic pole being near our zenith. The celestial hemisphere
which, being above our horizon, is visible to us, is the one to which
we have hitherto directed our attention in describing the distribution
of the stars. But below our horizon is another hemisphere, that of our
antipodes, which is the counterpart of ours. The stars which it
contains are in a different part of the universe from those which we
see, and, without unity of plan, would not be subject to the same law.
But