266 SHOOTING STARS 



frequently reach the earth. And they were also transparent 

 bodies he argued or they must have been visible by reflected sun- 

 light when in a mass before their dispersion, for when grouped 

 together they formed a considerable cloud near the earth, and he 

 inferred that the meteors composed a body which in its constitution 

 bore a strong analogy to comets, for comets are extremely 

 light and transparent, and there is much reason to believe are 

 composed of combustible materials. He farther regarded them 

 as the portions of a body of unknown extent existing in planetary 

 space which in one part of its orbital revolution approached very 

 near to the earth's annual path, and then the particles of this body 

 were distributed towards her surface by the force of attraction. 

 This theory is in many points the same as that of the eminent 

 Italian astronomer Schiaparelli who first established the identity of 

 meteor and comet orbits from his observations of the August 

 meteors in 1866. His deductions were that shooting stars form 

 a large number of rings, each consisting of a vast assemblage of 

 atoms, which become visible as the earth intersects them in her 

 orbit. They exist in the form of cosmical clouds and the 

 number of such systems must be very great. The original form 

 of the cloud, whatever it may have been, cannot penetrate far 

 into our system without assuming the form of an elongated 

 cylinder passing gradually into a stream of particles which are so 

 scattered that their orbits may cross each other without interrup- 

 tion and may be continually changing like the beds of rivers. 

 Thus he showed that meteors were not only members of the 

 planetary system but that they belonged to the stellar regions 

 (whence their orbits lie) and to be vesiWy falling stars as their name 

 implies, bearing just the same relation to comets as the asteroids 

 (or minor planets) bear to the planets, smaller size being 

 compensated for^ by greater number in both cases. He pointed 

 out an actual identity in the elements of the second comet of 

 1862, with the August stream of meteors, and of the first comet 

 of 1866, with the November meteors, and concluded his remarks . 



