by our antipodes. Our horizon corresponds, as it were, to the
central circle of the Milky Way, which now surrounds us on all
sides in a horizontal direction, while the galactic poles are 90
degrees distant from every part of it, as every point of the
horizon is 90 degrees from the zenith.

Let us next count the number of stars visible in a powerful
telescope in the region of the heavens around the galactic pole,
now our zenith, and find the average number per square degree.
This will be the richness of the region in stars. Then we take
regions nearer the horizontal Milky Way--say that contained
between 10 degrees and 20 degrees from the zenith--and, by a
similar count, find its richness in stars. We do the same for
other regions, nearer and nearer to the horizon, till we reach the
galaxy itself. The result of all the counts will be that the
richness of the sky in stars is least around the galactic pole,
and increases in every direction towards the Milky Way.

Without such counts of the stars we might imagine our stellar
system to be a globular collection of stars around which the
object in question passed as a girdle; and we might take a globe
with a chain passing around it as representative of the possible
figure of the stellar system. But the actual increase in star-
thickness which we have pointed out shows us that this view is
incorrect. The nature and validity of the conclusions to be drawn
can be best appreciated by a statement of some features of this
tendency of the stars to crowd towards the galactic circle.

Most remarkable is the fact that the tendency is seen even among
the brighter stars. Without either telescope or technical