in Astronomy, that long, white, luminous track, which seems to encompass the heavens like a swath, scarf, or girdle: and which is easily perceivable in a clear night, especially when the moon does not appear. The Greeks call it Γαλαξις, Galaxy, of Γάλα, γαλακτος, Milk; on account of its colour and appearance: the Latins, for the same reason, call it via lactea; or milky way. It passes between Sagittarius and Gemini, and divides the sphere into two parts; it is unequally broad; and in some parts is single, in others double.

The ancient poets, and even philosophers, speak of the Galaxy as the road or way by which the heroes went to heaven.

Aristotle makes it a kind of meteor, formed of a crowd of vapours, drawn into that part by certain large stars displosed in the regions of the heavens answering hereto.

Others, finding that the Galaxy was seen all over the globe, that it always corresponded to the same fixed stars, and that it transcended the height of the highest planets, set aside Aristotle's opinion, and placed the Galaxy in the firmament, or region of the fixed stars, and concluded it to be nothing but an assemblage of an infinite number of minute stars.

Since the invention of the telescope, this opinion has been abundantly confirmed. By directing a good telescope to any part of the milky way; where before we only saw a confused whiteness, we now discover an innumerable multitude of little stars, so remote, that a naked eye confounds them. See ASTRONOMY, No 211.