"A broad and ample road whose dust is gold And pavement stars, as stats to thee appear, Seen in the galaxy, that milky way, Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest Powder'd with stars".

The Galaxy, or "milky way", is a light coloured irregular circle or band, which encompasses the heavens, and is distinguishable from the "etherial blue", by its brilliancy. It appears like a shining zone, which owes its splendour to the innumerable stars of which it is formed, and which passes through many of the constellations in its ample range.

Dr. Herschel surveyed this peculiar part of the heavens with a powerful telescope, twenty feet in length, and with an aperture of eighteen inches. With this powerful instrument he found that it completely resolved the whitish appearances into stars. The portion he first observed was about the hand and club of Orion, in which he found an astonishing multitude of stars, whose number he endeavoured to estimate, by counting many fields (or apparent spaces of the heavens, which he could see at once through his telescope) and computing from a medium of these, how many might be contained in a given portion of the "milky way". In the most vacant place he found 63 stars; the other six fields contained 110,60, 70, 00, 70, and 74 stars, a medium of all, which gave 79 for the number of stars in each field. Thus he found, that by allowing 15' for the diameter of his field of view, a belt of 15° long and 2° broad, which he had often seen pass before his telescope in an hour's time,' could not contain less than 50,000 stars, large enough to be distinctly numbered; besides which, he suspected twice as many more, which could not for want of light be scarcely perceived.

Dr. Herschel also remarks, " that the milky way, is a most extensive stratum of stars, of various sizes, admits no longer of real doubt; and that our sun is one of the heavenly bodies belonging to it, is as evident. I have now viewed and guaged this shining zone in almost every direction, and find it composed of shining stars, whose number constantly increases and decreases, in proportion to its apparent brightness to the naked eye".