also be used for this purpose, but we caution that a background cluster of galaxies (Abell 1552 at z$\approx$0.084) is located in this field and thus region A may not be representative. This galaxy cluster is presumably part of a background sheet-like complex, which includes also Abell 1526 at a very similar redshift. Field A was selected to offer insight on how the presence of background galaxies disturbs the results. The enhancements of the galaxy background may distort the Wolf diagrams of galaxies (Figure 5), and indeed some FIR enhancements could be in the direction of these galaxy clusters. However, searches for dust in clusters of galaxies have, so far, been negative (Maoz 1995). Thus, we may tentatively discount the FIR enhancements in the direction of background clusters of galaxies as chance superpositions. Field B is considered not to be affected by absorption/extinction and is in the direction of the low FIR emission of the VR.

Attempts to detect the presence of dust as a “total extinction” effect, which modifies the cumulative galaxy counts between the different regions, were not successful. The differences were not significant and indicate that if dust is present, it may cause at most a small 