the main body of the Galaxy and extinguishes light from galaxies in the central part of the Virgo cluster (VC). There is no way to establish a distance to the extinguishing cloud with the data we presented above, except to note that it is probably $>$1 kpc.

A nearby dust feature, observed by Haikala (1995) in the far-UV, has been located at $\sim$120 pc using the distribution of E$_{b-y}$ color excesses. This dust cloudlet produces a visual extinction A$_V\leq$0.4 mag and is located at (l=251.1, b=+73.3); this location is very similar to what we found for the Virgo Ring (VR) and may indicate that either our distance evaluation is wrong, or that the location technique of the Haikala feature did not use a sufficient number of more distant stars.

Indications that the dust cloud cannot be a nearby feature originate mainly from the lack of influence on the distribution of stars. Supporting evidence to the same comes from the reddening study of Knude (1996). He used uvbyH$\beta$ measurements of A3-G0 stars with B$\leq$11.5 mag and $\vert$b$\vert>70^{\circ}$ to determine the distribution of extinction. His results for E$_{b-y}$, broken by galactic latitude and by longitude quadrants, are of particular interest. The area 