Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Knowledge, Vol. 14: An Illustrated Magazine of Science, Simply Worded Exactly Described; January to December 1891
Proctor's affection for this spiral is remarkable. It was advanced first of all with some caution as a conformation which seemed to account for all the known peculiarities of structure in the galaxy - ih short, it supplied a useful working theory. For example, he makes the following admission: I would not have it understood, however, that I at all insist on the general shape of the spiral shown in the figure. On the contrary, that curve is only one out of several which might fairly account for the observed appearance of the Milky Way and I have often felt inclined to doubt whether a single spiral of this sort is in reality the best way of account ing for the observed appearance of the galactic zone. What I do insist upon as obviously forced\ upon us by the evidence is that (1) the apparent streams formed by the Milky Way upon the heavens indicate the existence of real streams in space and (2) that the lucid stars seen on the stream are really associated with the telescopic stars which form, so to speak, the body of the stream. Whether that stream form a single spiral or several, or whether, instead of spirals, there may not be a number of streams of small stars, placed at different distances from us, and lying in all directions round the medial plane of the galaxy, but more or less tilted to that plane (the sun not lying within any one of the streams), are questions which can only be resolved by the systematic scrutiny of this wonderful zone. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
