262 On the alleged Periodical Meteors and on Shooting Stars, 



another at short intervals, precisely in the place where a pro- 

 digious number of them had already been seen at Geneva in 

 1832, and especially in the United States in 1633. What is 

 the nature of these fugitive stars ? Whence do they come? 

 Whither do they go when they disappear from our sight ? Do 

 they sometimes fall upon the earth ? Such are the principal 

 questions which every one asks himself, and which are of the 

 highest interest. 



The much-wished-for fall of one of these meteors would 

 without doubt furnish the chemist and physicist with the means 

 of explaining certain points quite unknown. Those observers 

 also, who were aware of the importance of this inquiry, have 

 not neglected to bestow their attention in this direction, and 

 some of them, in fact, state that they have seen several of these 

 meteors which were projected against the sides of the mountains 

 by which they were surrounded. This fact is undoubtedly of a 

 positive nature, but is it such as to prove the authenticity of the 

 fall of the meteor down to the surface of the earth ?^.Have not 

 the illusions which exercise so great an influence here, and un- 

 der which observers are more or less placed, contributed to a 

 belief in a projection towards the ground which was apparent 

 only ? In support of this suspicion I may be allowed to mention 

 a fact which I had an opportunity of stating more than six years 

 ago in the former series of the Journal of Geneva, in the numbers 

 for March and April, 1830, as follows : A meteor appeared 

 on the 19th of March of the before-mentioned year, at half- 

 past seven in the evening ; according to the report of eye-wit- 

 nesses, it had a round disc, with a well-defined edge, which 

 was almost equal to that of the full moon, and which shed a 

 strong light of a bluish colour ; it circulated with great velo- 

 city from east to west, and appeared to be at a very great 

 height. Those who observed it at Geneva, and who followed 

 it with their eyes in its horizontal course, thought they saw it 

 burst in the air, and fall in pieces at some paces before them. 

 Other persons, living at the village of Chene, half a league 

 from Geneva, and who were by chance in the street, being 

 convinced that they had seen it fall on a neighbouring house, 

 ran directly to ascertain whether the building had not been set 

 on fire. This same meteor was also remarked at Saint-Legier, 

 near Vevey, in the canton of Vaud, and on the heights of 

 Fraubrunnen in the canton of Berne. Those who saw it from 

 this last place, and who followed it for about thirty seconds, 

 agree in saying that it travelled slowly in the direction of the 

 Jura, and that it appeared to them to fall not far from the 

 neighbourhood of Orbe, a small town of the canton of Vaud, 

 thirteen leagues north-east of Geneva. Thus in the three si- 

 tuations, the illusion of the observers was so complete, that in 



