STANNERIES. Tin mines or works. STAR. A general name for the heavenly bodies, but more particularly for what are otherwise denominated fixed stars, as distin onished from planets, comets, satellites, &c. These stars are stationed in space at twenty or thirty billions of miles distance from each other. The number visible to the naked eye, above the horizon at one time, is about 1000 ; but powerful telescopes augment their num ber indeterminately. Herschel was enabled to count hundreds in the field of his tele scope, and the milky way is an assemblage of an almost infinite number of stars, indistinct to the naked eye. Herschel counted ten thou sand in a square degree. It appears that space is filled with similar clusters or won derful shoals of stars, which, to the unassisted eye, appear as luminous points, but viewed through telescopes display innumerable stars at such distances that their light must have been hundreds of years travelling to the earth.
Of these clusters, called Nebulae, Herschel has given a catalogue of many hundreds in all varieties of forms. He found, also, huni. nous spaces in which he could distinguish no stars, which may, perhaps, be considered as a variety of nature different from the system of suns and planets ; but speculations on such subjects are useless. The particular stars in each constellation have been moreover distin guished, by the moderns, by the letters of the Greek, and also according to their magnitude, from the first or largest to the sixth or the smallest that are visible to the naked eye. STARBOARD. The right hand of a ship, when looking towards the head or fore part. STARCH. A powder drawn from wheat flour, and used in stiffening linen. STARLING. A bird about nine inches long, that is very docile, and may be easily taught to speak.