sufficiently high powers, every
nebula would be decomposed into stars--that the irresolvability is due
solely to distance. The hypothesis now commonly entertained is, that all
nebulae are galaxies more or less like in nature to that immediately
surrounding us; but that they are so inconceivably remote as to look,
through ordinary telescopes, like small faint spots. And not a few have
drawn the corollary, that by the discoveries of Lord Rosse the Nebular
Hypothesis has been disproved.

Now, even supposing that these inferences respecting the distances and
natures of the nebulae are valid, they leave the Nebular Hypothesis
substantially as it was. Admitting that each of these faint spots is a
sidereal system, so far removed that its countless stars give less light
than one small star of our own sidereal system; the admission is in no
way inconsistent with the belief that stars, and their attendant
planets, have been formed by the aggregation of nebulous matter. Though,
doubtless, if the existence of nebulous matter now in course of
concentration be disproved, one of the evidences of the Nebular
Hypothesis is destroyed, yet the remaining evidences remain. It is a
tenable position that though nebular condensation is now nowhere to be
seen in progress, yet it was once going on universally. And, indeed, it
might be argued that the still-continued existence of diffused nebulous
matter is scarcely to be expected; seeing that the causes which have
resulted in the aggregation of one mass, must have been acting on all
masses, and that hence the existence of masses not aggregated would be a
fact calling for explanation. Thus, granting the immediate conclusions
suggested by these recent disclosures of the six-feet reflector, the
corollary which many have drawn is inadmissible.

But these conclusions may be successfully contested. Receiving them
though we have been, for years past, as established truths, a critical
examination of the facts has convinced us that they are quite
unwarrantable. They involve so many manifest incongruities, that we have
been astonished to find men of science entertaining them, even as
probable. Let us consider these incongruities.

* * * * *

In the first place, mark what is inferable from the distribution of
nebulae.

"The spaces which precede or which follow simple nebulae," says
Arago, "and _a fortiori_, groups of nebulae, contain generally few
stars.