appearance, "like a pure flame that shot across the heavens."

Dr. Herschel made many observations on this portion of the heavens,
using a Newtonian reflector of twenty feet focal length, and an aperture
of eighteen inches. With this powerful telescope he completely resolved
the whitish appearance into stars, which the telescopes he had formerly
used had not light enough to do. In the most vacant place to be met with
in that neighbourhood, he found sixty-three stars; other six fields, or
apparent spaces in the heavens, which he could see at once through his
telescope, averaged seventy-nine stars in each field: thus he found that
by allowing 15 min. of a deg. for the diameter of his field of view, a
belt of 15 deg. long, and 2 deg. broad, which he had often seen pass
before his telescope in an hour's time could not contain less than
50,000 stars, large enough to be distinctly numbered, besides which he
suspected twice as many more, which could be seen only now and then by
faint glimpses, for want of sufficient light. In the most crowded part
of that region he informs us, he has had fields of view which contained
no less than 588 stars, and these were continued for many minutes, so
that in one quarter of an hour's time there passed no less than 116,000
stars. He also intimates the probability of the sun being placed in this
great stratum, though perhaps not in the very centre of its thickness.

From the appearance of the galaxy it seems to encompass the whole
heavens, as it certainly must if the sun be within the same. From
succeeding observations made by Dr. Herschel, he gathers that the milky
way is a most extensive stratum of stars of various sizes, and our sun
evidently one of the heavenly bodies belonging to it. In viewing and
gauging this shining zone in almost every direction, he found the number
of stars composing it, by the account of those gauges constantly
increase and decrease in proportion to its apparent brightness to the