The ingenious method of "star-gauging," and its issue in the delineation of the sidereal system as an irregular stratum of evenly-scattered suns, is the best-known part of his work. But it was, in truth, only a first rude approximation, the principle of which maintained its credit in the literature of astronomy a full half-century after its abandonment by its author. This principle was the general equality of star distribution. If equal portions of space really held equal numbers of stars, it is obvious that the number of stars visible in any particular direction would be strictly proportional to the range of the system in that direction, apparent accumulation being produced by real extent. The process of "gauging the heavens," accordingly, consisted in counting the stars in successive telescopic fields, and calculating thence the depths of space necessary to contain them. The result of 3,400 such operations was the plan of the Galaxy familiar to every reader of an astronomical text-book. Widely-varying evidence was, as might have been expected, derived from an examination of different portions of the sky. Some fields of view were almost blank, while others (in or near the Milky Way) blazed with the radiance of many hundred stars compressed into an area about one-fourth that of the full-moon. In the most crowded parts 116,000 were stated to have been passed in review within a quarter of an hour. Here the "length of his sounding-line" was estimated by Herschel at about 497 times the distance of Sirius--in other words, the bounding orb, or farthest sun of the system in that direction, so far as could be seen with the 20-foot reflector, was thus inconceivably remote. But since the distance of Sirius, no less than of every other fixed star, was as yet an unknown quantity, the dimensions inferred for the Galaxy were of course purely relative; a knowledge of its form and structure might (admitting the truth of the fundamental hypothesis) be obtained, but its real or absolute size remained altogether undetermined.