178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vaj own mind the most incredible fact of all is, not the existence of 

 the phenomena, but that the phenomena have not been sooner observed 

 by science, and that they have so long escaped the notice even of 

 scientific men who live near or in those regions, and who frequently 

 visit them. 



Two of the best known citizens of Greenville a town at the foot 

 of Moosehead Lake who have lived there very many years, if not all 

 their lives, who have had these Jumpers in their employ, denied or 

 doubted the existence of any of these phenomena, declaring that these 

 so-called Jumpers were merely drunk or playing. My guide in the 

 woods of northern New Hampshire, who had spent his whole life in 

 those wilds, who was old enough to be a great-grandfather, denied, 

 without reservation, the whole claim ; but, after investigating the sub- 

 ject with me, was compelled to admit its genuineness. One of my 

 fishing companions in the woods, a clear-brained and vigorous man of 

 business, and a man of the world, who for seventeen years had passed 

 his summers in these regions, knew nothing of the subject until this 

 season when I called his attention to it. All around these districts there 

 are physicians, not in them but near them for in the summer season the 

 Jumpers scatter, to a certain degree, over the farms in the vicinity and 

 every year physicians and men of science, experts in various realms, 

 visit for recreation the districts where these Jumpers most abound ; 

 but if they see them they do not notice them, or if they notice them 

 they do not understand them, or if they understand them they say 

 nothing about them, and do not attempt to bring, or at least do not 

 succeed in bringing, the phenomena into science. 



THE AUGUST METEOKS.* 



By W. F. denning, F. R. A. S. 



THE August shower of meteors forms one of the most attractive 

 and important of the annual phenomena witnessed by astrono- 

 mers, and the display is awaited every year with considerable interest, 

 not only by a large section of habitual observers, but by many persons 

 who have their attention called to it in a mere casual way by the fre- 

 quency and brightness of the meteors. For, on the 10th of August, if 

 the night is clear and the moonlight not very strong, a person can not 

 be long in the open before his curiosity is excited by numbers of these 

 " falling stars," which he will notice traveling swiftly athwart the 

 sky, and leaving lines of phosphorescence along their paths. It is, 



* For a description of the November meteor-showers, see " Popular Science Monthly," 

 vol. XV, page 445. 



