When Herschel found this background unresolvable into stars, he concluded that it did not form part of the Milky Way, but was at an immeasurable distance behind, so that here he was looking right through the Galaxy at a still more distant region of stars, too distant and faint for his telescope to distinguish them separately. But the spectroscope has taught us that these cloud-like nebulae, though stars are often mingled with them, are not formed of stars at all, but of inchoate masses of faintly luminous gas; and they cluster so thickly in the Milky Way, generally avoiding other parts of the sky, that it seems evident that they lie in it and form part of it. They are also found in great numbers in the Greater Magellanic Cloud. If the days of the Herschel’s photography had not come to the aid of astronomers, and Sir John speaks of the feeling of despair which often almost overcame him when trying, night after night, to draw the “endless details” of this nebula, so capricious in their forms are its curving branches and the dark spaces between, so strangely does its brightness vary in different regions, and so numerous are the stars scattered over it. With extraordinary patience he succeeded in cataloguing the positions of over 1200 of these. To compare the present aspect of the stars with his catalogue would be a laborious task, but might lead to results of great value. The curious dark oval rift in the midst of the bright part, which he compared with a keyhole, he found to be not entirely devoid of light, a thin nebulous veil covering part of it; and many of the dark lanes and holes which in small instruments look perfectly black, are actually filled with faint stars and extremely faint nebulosity. The whole region near the nebula is exceedingly rich in stars, and also in star-clusters, as we have already seen. To quote Herschel once again: “Nor is it easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle it offers when viewed in a sweep, ushered in as it is by so glorious and innumerable a procession of stars, to which it forms a sort of climax, justifying expressions which, though I find them written in my journal, in the excitement of the moment, would be thought extravagant if conveyed to these pages. In fact, it is impossible for anyone with the least spark of astronomical enthusiasm about him to pass soberly in review, with a powerful telescope and in a fine night, that portion of the southern sky ... such are the variety and interest of the objects he will encounter, and such the dazzling richness of the starry ground on which they are presented to his gaze.”