ude and of the extent of the intervals by which they are
separated from each other, nor can we learn anything of the details
associated with the systems and combinations into which they enter. It
is believed that the majority of the stars in the Milky Way equal or
surpass the Sun in brilliancy and splendour. They are tenth to fifteenth
magnitude stars; now, the Sun at the distance indicated by these
magnitudes would in the telescope appear a much fainter object; he would
not reach the fifteenth magnitude. Consequently, the galactic stars are
regarded as his peers or superiors in magnitude and brilliancy. Those
myriads of suns are all in motion--in nature a stationary body is
unknown--and they are sufficiently far apart so as not to be unduly
influenced by their mutual gravitational attraction; a distance perhaps
equal to that which separates our Sun from the nearest fixed star may
intervene between each of those orbs. In the deepest recesses of the
Milky Way, Sir William Herschel was able to count 500 stars receding in
regular order behind each other; between each there existed an interval
of space, probably not less extensive than the interstellar spaces among
the stars by which we are surrounded.

The richest galactic regions in the Northern Hemisphere are found in
Perseus, Cygnus, and Aquila. Night after night could be spent in
sweeping the telescope over fields where the stars can be seen in
amazing profusion. In the interval of a quarter of an hour, Sir William
Herschel observed 116,000 stars pass before him in the telescope, and on
another occasion he perceived 258,000 stars in the space of forty-one
minutes. In the constellation of the Swan there is a region about 5 deg. in
breadth which contains 331,000 stars. Photography reveals in a
remarkable manner the amazing richness of this stelliferous zone; the
impress of the stars on the sensitive plate of the camera, in some
instances, resembles a shower of descending snowflakes.

Though Sir William Herschel was able to fathom the Galaxy in most of its
tracts, yet there were regions which his great telescopes were unable
to penetrate entirely through. In Cepheus there is a spot where he
observed the stars become 'gradually less till they escape the eye so
that appearances here favour the idea of a succeeding more distant
clustering part.' He perceived another in Scorpio 'where, through the
hollows and deep recesses of its complicated structure, we behold what
has all