1S70.| on the Storij of the Norcmhrr Meteors. 49 



UECAriTULATION. 



\Vc have now traced an outline (»f the marvellous history of tliese 

 Arabs of the sky. We have met with outbursts upon stars sometimes 

 of sufficient violence to shoot ofif part of their substance. We have 

 found the gaseous portion sweeping through space like a net, and the 

 vapours that accompanied it condensed into spatters that have consoli- 

 dated into meteorites. We have seen this system travelling through 

 boundless space, with nothing near it except an occasional solitary 

 meteor, and we liave seen it in tlie long lapse of ages slowly augment- 

 ing its cluster of these little strangers. As it wandered on it passed 

 within the far-spreading reach of the sun's attraction, and perhaps has 

 since been millions of years in descending towards him. Its natural 

 course would have been to have glided round him in a curve, and to 

 have then withdrawn to the same vast abyss from which it had come ; 

 but in attempting this, it became entangled with one of the planets, 

 which dragged it out of its course and then flung it aside. Immedi- 

 ately, it entered upon the new course assigned to it, which it has been 

 pursuing ever since. After passing the planet the different members 

 of the groujD found themselves in paths very close to one another, but 

 not absolutely the same. These orbits differed from one another very 

 slightly in all respects, and amongst others in the time which a body 

 takes to travel round them. Those meteors whicb got round soonest 

 found themselves, after the first revolution, at the head of the group ; 

 those which moved slowest fell into the rear, and the comet was the 

 last of all. Each succeeding revolution lengthened out the column, 

 and the comet soon separated from the rest. Fifty-two revolutions 

 have now taken place, and the little cloud has crept out into an 

 extended stream, stretching a long way round the orbit, while the 

 comet has fallen the greater part of a revolution behind. We can 

 look forward too, and see that in seventeen centuries more the train 

 will have doubled its length, and that ultimately it will form a com- 

 plete ring round the whole orbit. When this takes place, a shower of 

 these meteors will fall every year upon the earth, but the swarm will 

 be then so scattered that the display will be far less imposing than it 

 now is. 



Such is the history of one of the many meteoric streams which 

 cross the path of the earth. There are several of these streams, and 

 no doubt the story of every one of them is quite as strange. And if 

 there are several streams of meteors, which come across that little line 

 in space which constitutes the earth's orbit, what untold multitudes 

 of them must be within the whole length and breadth of the solar 

 system ! Perhaps it may even turn out that the mysterious zodiacal 

 light which attends the sun, is due to countless hordes of these little 

 bodies flying in all directions through the space that lies within the 

 earth's orbit. 



Vol. TX. (No. 70.) e 



