24 CANARY ISLANDS. 



For some evenings past, I have observed an immense 

 number of shooting stars, leaving behind them a sparkling 

 train. As we advanced southward, they appeared to 

 increase in brilliancy and in numbers. The same fact 

 was observed by Humboldt, who remarks that these me- 

 teors are more common and more luminous in certain 

 regions of the earth than in others. He has nowhere seen 

 them more frequent, than in the vicinity of the volcanoes 

 of Quito and in that part of the South Sea which washes 

 the shores of Guatimala. Between the tropics, and in fact 

 all warm climates, they generally leave a train behind them, 

 which sometimes remains luminous for ten or twelve 

 seconds. At other times, they seem to explode and dis- 

 charge thousands of brilliant sparks. They are much 

 lower here than in high latitudes, and are very seldom seen 

 beneath a cloud. They are most frequently observed in 

 clear, serene weather, and move in the direction which 

 the wind blows ; but this is not always the case, for I have 

 noticed them when the sky was totally overcast, and to 

 move in various directions about the same time, and in 

 one instance I observed one in the day-time, which passed 

 between me and a dark-blue cloud. 



Although these shooting or falling stars are a common 

 phenomenon, their great distance and transient nature 

 have hitherto frustrated every attempt to ascertain their 

 cause. However, the connection of these meteors with an 

 active state of the atmospheric electricity, is certain from 

 observation ; and we have more reason to consider them 

 as electric sparks, than as solid or fluid matter in the act 

 of combustion. 



During most of the time this week back, we have been 

 visited by light baffling winds, and often by perfect calms, 

 which afforded me at times, no small share of amusement. 

 Every body who has been at sea, has heard sailors whistle 

 during a calm, in order to " raise the wind," which many 

 of them attribute to the agency of some unknown power ; 

 but some of our modern theorists impute it to a certain 

 sympathy existing between the air and the sound resem- 

 bling that of the whistling of the wind. 



It is a well known fact in acoustics, that harmonic 

 sounds may be effected by a sympathetic action conveyed 



