202 Plan for establishing a Company for the Cultivation 
ture of shooting stars is correct. Perhaps the following consi- 
deration may tend to remove such an impression, without enter- 
ing into a more laboured investigation of this interesting phzno- 
menon, or it may give Mr.F. an opportunity of giving a brief and 
clear exposition of his notions on the subject, and of the obser- 
vations on which they are founded. 
[t is well known that when a body moves with more than a 
certain degree of velocity it cannot be observed by the human 
eye: the motion of wheels, of bodies in a sling, the whirling of a 
fire-brand, and the rapid movements of a dexterous professor of 
legerdemain, may be cited as instances: but the motion of a 
body revolving round the earth must be much more rapid, and 
consequently the body itself must be invisible. Mr. F. states the 
necessary degree of velocity to be “immense :” and it may be 
shown that it will require the satedlitula to move at the rate of 
about 20,000 feet per second; but it cannot be said of these 
satellitula, as Newton has of the ‘planets, that their “‘ motions may 
subsist an exceedingly long time *.” Therefore Mr. F. must cer- 
tainly be wrong in assuming them to have been moving within 
our atmosphere since the creation. Perhaps it may be said their 
brightness renders them visible, notwithstanding their immense 
velocity. In that case I should be glad to see the outlines of a hy- 
pothesis for heating those bodies, or to explain how they became 
luminous. — Till these points be settled I shall not meddle further 
with the subject. I am, sir, yours, 
ScEpPTIcus. 
XXXII. Plan for establishing, by a Royal or Parliamentary 
Charter, a Company, with a large Cupital, for carrying «mn 
the Cultivation of the Waste Lands of the Kingdom, and pro- 
moting domestic Colonization ; while, by employmg the Poor 
in agricultural Improvements, ‘the heavy Bu: denof the Poor- 
Rates will le materially diminished. By the Right Hon. 
Sir Jonn Stnciair, Bart. Founder of the Board oj ; Agr icul- 
ture. 
Tare are no circumstances connected with the existing state 
of this country, which are so peculiarly disgraceful to its internal 
policy, or so hostile to its most essential interests, as the vast ex- 
tent of waste lands every where to be met with, and the multi- 
tudes of poor who are destitute of employment, and a burden on 
the community.—That many of these wastes will require much 
labour and expense to cultivate them, must be admitted; and 
that many of these unfortunate individuals now unemployed, are 
* Principles of Natural Philosophy, book ii. prop. 10. 
incapable 
