It is now pretty generally believed that many of the dark regions of the Milky Way are due not to actual absence of stars so much as to the absorption of light by intervening tracts of nebulous matter on the hither side of the Galactic aggregations and, probably in fact, within the oblate inner stellar system itself. Easton has made many hundred counts of stars in galactic regions of Cygnus and Aquila where the range of intensity of the light is very marked; in fact, the star density of the bright patches of the Galaxy is so far in excess of the density adjacent and just outside the Milky Way, that the conclusion is inevitable that this excess is due to the star clouds. Of the distance of the Milky Way we have very little knowledge. It is certainly not less than 1,000 parsecs, and more likely 5,000 parsecs, a distance over which light would travel in about 16,000 years. Quite certainly all parts of the Galaxy are not at the same distance, and probably there are branches in some regions that lie behind one another. While the general regions of the nebulæ are remote from the Galactic plane, the large irregular nebulæ, as the Trifid, the Keyhole, and the Omega nebulæ, are found chiefly in the Milky Way. In addition to the irregular nebulæ many types of stellar objects appear to be strongly condensed toward the Milky Way, but this may be due to the inner stellar system, rather than a real relation to Galactic formations. Quite different are the Magellanic clouds, which contain many gaseous nebulæ and are unique objects of the sky, having no resemblance to the true spiral nebulæ which, as a rule, avoid the Galactic regions. Worthy of note also is the theory of Easton that the Milky Way has itself the form of a double-branched spiral, which explains the visible features quite well, but is incapable of either disproof or verification. The central nucleus he locates in the rich Galactic region of Cygnus, with the sun well outside the nucleus itself. By combining the available photographs of the Galaxy, he has produced a chart which indicates in a general way how the stellar aggregations might all be arrayed so as to give the effect of the Galaxy as we see it. Shapley, at Mount Wilson, has studied the structure of the Galactic system, in which he has been aided by Mrs. Shapley. An interesting part of this work relates to the distribution of the spiral nebulæ, and to certain properties of their systematic recessional motion, suggesting that the entire Galactic system may be rapidly moving through space. Apparently the spiral nebulæ are not distant stellar organizations or "island universes," but truly nebular structures of vast volume which in general are actively repelled from stellar systems. A tentative cosmogonic hypothesis has been formulated to account for the motions, distribution, and observed structure of clusters and spiral nebulæ.