These two bodies are known as the Magellanic clouds, and individually bear the names of Major and Minor Nubecula. According to Sir John Herschel, "the Nubecula Major, like the Minor, consists partly of large tracts and ill-defined patches of irresolvable nebula, and of nebulosity in every stage of resolution up to perfectly resolved stars like the Milky Way, as also of regular and irregular nebulæ ... of globular clusters in every stage of resolvability, and of clustering groups sufficiently insulated and condensed to come under the designation of clusters of stars." Its outlines are vague and somewhat uncertain, but surely include an area of more than 40 square degrees--i. e., as much as the bowl of the Big Dipper--and within this area Herschel counted several hundred nebulæ and clusters "which far exceeds anything that is to be met with in any other region of the heavens." Although its excessive complexity of detail baffled Herschel's attempts at artistic delineation, it has yielded to the modern photographic processes, which show the Nubecula Major to be an enormous spiral nebula made up of subordinate stars, nebulæ, and clusters, as is the Milky Way. Compared with the Andromeda nebula, its greater angular extent suggests a smaller distance, although for the present all efforts at determining the parallax of either seem hopeless. But the spiral form which is common to both suggests that the Milky Way itself may be a gigantic spiral nebula near whose center lies the sun, a humble member of a great cluster of stars which is roughly globular in shape, but flattened at the poles of the galaxy and completely encircled by its coils. However plausible such a view may appear, it is for the present, at least, pure hypothesis, although vigorously advocated by Easton, who bases his argument upon the appearance of the galaxy itself.