his figures the diameter is about five times the thickness. Further, the Milky Way is during part of its length divided into two branches, the space between the two branches being comparatively free of stars. Corresponding to this subdivision there has therefore to be assumed a cleft in the "grindstone."
This "grindstone" theory of the universe had been suggested in 1750 by Thomas Wright (1711–1786) in his Theory of the Universe, and again by Kant five years later; but neither had attempted, like Herschel, to collect numerical data and to work out consistently and in detail the consequences of the fundamental hypothesis.
That the assumption of uniform distribution of stars in space could not be true in detail was evident to Herschel from the beginning. A star cluster, for example, in which many thousands of faint stars are collected together in a very small space on the sky, would have to be interpreted as representing a long projection or spike full of stars, extending far beyond the limits of the adjoining portions of the sidereal system, and pointing directly away from the position occupied by the solar system. In the same way certain regions in the sky which are found to be bare of stars would have to be regarded as tunnels through the stellar system. That even one or two such spikes or tunnels should exist would be improbable enough, but as star clusters were known in considerable numbers before Herschel began his work, and were discovered by him in hundreds, it was impossible to explain their existence on this hypothesis, and it became necessary to assume that a star cluster occupied a region of space in which stars were really closer together than elsewhere.
Moreover further study of the arrangement of the stars, particularly of those in the Milky Way, led Herschel gradually to the belief that his original assumption was a wider departure from the truth than he had at first supposed; and in 1811, nearly 30 years after he had begun star-gauging, he admitted a definite change of opinion:—
