thoughtful person can doubt. We are unable to get away from the
evidence that a nebula is like a seed-ground from which stars spring
forth; or we may say that nebulæ resemble clouds in whose bosom
raindrops are forming. The wonderful aspect of the admixtures of
nebulæ and star-clusters in Sagittarius has been described in Chapter
1. We now come to a still more extraordinary phenomenon of this kind
-- the Pleiades nebulæ.

The group of the Pleiades, although lying outside the main course of
the Galaxy, is connected with it by a faint loop, and is the scene of
the most remarkable association of stars and nebulous matter known in
the visible universe. The naked eye is unaware of the existence of
nebulæ in the Pleiades, or, at the best, merely suspects that there is
something of the kind there; and even the most powerful telescopes are
far from revealing the full wonder of the spectacle; but in
photographs which have been exposed for many hours consecutively, in
order to accumulate the impression of the actinic rays, the revelation
is stunning. The principle stars are seen surrounded by, and, as it
were, drowned in, dense nebulous clouds of an unparalleled kind. The
forms assumed by these clouds seem at first sight inexplicable. They
look like fleeces, or perhaps more like splashes and daubs of luminous
paint dashed carelessly from a brush. But closer inspection shows that
they are, to a large extent, woven out of innumerable threads of filmy
texture, and there are many indications of spiral tendencies. Each of
the bright stars of the group -- Alcyone, Merope, Maia, Electra,
Taygeta, Atlas -- is the focus of a dense fog (totally invisible,
remember, alike to the naked eye and to the telescope), and these
particular stars are veiled from sight behind the strange mists.
Running in all directions across the relatively open spaces are
nebulous wisps and streaks of the most curious forms. On some of the