hovering about the edges of a hurricane. And so again are suns born!

Let us turn to the exquisite spiral in Ursa Major; how different its
aspect from that of the other! One would say that if the terrific coil
in Triangulum has all but destroyed itself in its fury, this one on
the contrary has just begun its self-demolition. As one gazes one
seems to see in it the smooth, swift, accelerating motion that
precedes catastrophe. The central part is still intact, dense, and
uniform in texture. How graceful are the spirals that smoothly rise
from its oval rim and, gemmed with little stars, wind off into the
darkness until they have become as delicate as threads of gossamer!
But at bottom the story told here is the same -- creation by gyration!

Compare with the above the curious mass in Cetus. Here the plane of
the whirling nebula nearly coincides with our line of sight and we see
the object at a low angle. It is far advanced and torn to shreds, and
if we could look at it perpendicularly to its plane it is evident that
it would closely resemble the spectacle in Triangulum.

Then take the famous Andromeda Nebula (see Frontispiece), which is so
vast that notwithstanding its immense distance even the naked eye
perceives it as an enigmatical wisp in the sky. Its image on the
sensitive plate is the masterpiece of astronomical photography; for
wild, incomprehensible beauty there is nothing that can be compared
with it. Here, if anywhere, we look upon the spectacle of creation in
one of its earliest stages. The Andromeda Nebula is apparently less
advanced toward transformation into stellar bodies than is that in
Triangulum. The immense crowd of stars sprinkled over it and its
neighborhood seem in the main to lie this side of the nebula, and
consequently to have no connection with it. But incipient stars (in