The Milky Way forms a soft band of light round the whole heavens. In the Southern Hemisphere, as in the Northern Hemisphere, it is to be seen. In some parts the band narrows; in some parts it widens. Here it divides into two branches; there we find dark spaces in its midst. One such space in the south is so black and almost starless as to have been named the Coal-sack. All along, over the background of soft, dim light, lies a scattering of brighter stars shining on its surface. Much interest and curiosity have long been felt about this mysterious Milky Way. That it consists of innumerable suns, and that our sun is one among them, has been believed for a considerable time. But other questions arise. How many stars does the Milky Way contain? What is its shape? How far does it reach? No harm in asking the questions, only we have to be satisfied in astronomy to ask many questions which can not yet receive answers. No harm for man to learn that the utmost reach of his intellect must fall short in any attempt to sound the depths of God’s universe, even as the arm of a child would fall short in seeking to sound the depths of the ocean over the side of a little boat. For the attempt has been made to sound the depths of our star-galaxy out of this little earth-boat. The idea first occurred to the great Herschel, as we have already mentioned, and a grand idea it was--only a hopeless one. He turned his powerful telescope north, south, east, west. He counted the stars visible at one time in this, in that, in the other directions. He found a marked difference in the numbers. The portion of sky seen through his telescope was about one quarter the size of that covered by the moon. Sometimes he could merely perceive two or three bright points on a black background. At other times the field of his telescope was crowded. In the fuller portions of the Milky Way, he had four or five hundred stars under view at once. In one place he saw about one hundred and sixteen thousand stars pass before him in a single quarter of an hour. Herschel took it for granted that the stars of the Milky Way, uncountable in numbers, are, as a rule, much the same in size--so that brightest stars would, as a rule, be nearest, and dimmest stars would, as a rule, be farthest off. Where he found stars clustering thickly, beyond his power to penetrate, he believed that the Milky Way reached very far in that direction. Where he found black space, unlighted by stars or lighted by few stars, he decided that he had found the borders of our galaxy in that direction.