5; it is
situated in Canes Venatici, close to the tail of the Great Bear, and
wore, in Sir J. Herschel's instruments, the aspect of a split ring
encompassing a bright nucleus, thus presenting, as he supposed, a
complete analogue to the system of the Milky Way. In the Rosse mirror it
shone out as a vast whirlpool of light--a stupendous witness to the
presence of cosmical activities on the grandest scale, yet regulated by
laws as to the nature of which we are profoundly ignorant. Professor
Stephen Alexander of New Jersey, however, concluded, from an
investigation (necessarily founded on highly precarious data) of the
mechanical condition of these extraordinary agglomerations, that we see
in them "the partially scattered fragments of enormous masses once
rotating in a state of dynamical equilibrium." He further suggested
"that the separation of these fragments may still be in progress,"[329]
and traced back their origin to the disruption, through its own
continually accelerated rotation, of a "primitive spheroid" of
inconceivably vast dimensions. Such also, it was added (the curvilinear
form of certain outliers of the Milky Way giving evidence of a spiral
structure), is probably the history of our own cluster; the stars
composing which, no longer held together in a delicately adjusted system
like that of the sun and planets, are advancing through a period of
seeming confusion towards an appointed goal of higher order and more
perfect and harmonious adaptation.[330]

The class of spiral nebulae included, in 1850, fourteen members, besides
several in which the characteristic arrangement seemed partial or
dubious.[331] A tendency in the exterior stars of other clusters to
gather into curved branches (as in our Galaxy) was likewise noted; and
the existence of unsuspected analogies was proclaimed by the significant
combination in the "Owl" nebula (a large planetary in Ursa Major)[332]
of the twisted forms of a spiral with the perforated effect distinctive
of an annular nebula.

Once more, by the achievements of the Parsonstown reflector, the
supposition of a "shining fluid" filling vast regions of space was
brought into (as it has since proved) undeserved discredit. Although
Lord Rosse himself rejected the inference, that because many nebulae had
been resolved, all were resolvable, very few imitated his truly
scientific caution; and the results of Bond's investigations[333] with
the Harvard College refractor quickened and str