Mr. Farey's Queries on Shooting Stars. 349 



more brilliant course, were generally movins: at the time, in a 

 lower stratum of air than the shooting Stars ? ; and lastly, that 

 the greatest and most striking of our Meteors, which have yet 

 been subjected to satisfactory calculation, were then moving, 

 the lowest of any in the atmosphere ? ; will not such a chain 

 of facts as these, be sufficient for referring all these Bodies, to 

 the class of Salellihilce of the Earth ? 



8th. If it shall appear (as already hinted) that a large propor- 

 tion of the shooting Stars and Meteors have a downward 

 course ; which appearances, may in many instances be, merely 

 the eflfects of the perspective of courses, which would no where 

 meet or come in contact with the Earth ? ; also if many of them 

 vanish instantaneously in clear Sky (and not behind a cloud, 

 as too often has been said and written) while so descending, — 

 will not these and other circumstances, when attentively and 

 philosophically weighed, lead to the inference, that these Sa- 

 iellitulcB are principally, if not exclusively visible, in the latter 

 portions of their perigeal courses, across the atmosphere ? ; — 

 and to the further inference (for establishing which, many other 

 facts might be adduced) that the \a.%X, friction of the Air (even 

 in the highest situations in which we see shooting Stars move) 

 in the first portion of such perigeal course through the Atmo- 

 sphere, has occasioned the candescence, and the brilliant tem- 

 porary combustion which we witness, in the latter portion of 

 such course ? : — and further, that the passhig of a Satellitula 

 out of the atmosphere, occasions the sudden extinction of its 

 light ; which may so commonly be observed, and perhaps can 

 no otherwise be accounted for ? 



9ch. Would not a constantly recurring retardation (at intervals 

 not greatly different from 9 hours, perhaps) of the projectile 

 motion of a Satellitula, appearing occasionally at some past era 

 of the world, as a faint shooting Star to its Inhabitants, have 

 occasioned such Satellitula to move in a sort of Elliptical 

 Spiral, around the Earth's centre?; — and on principles dedu- 

 cible as above, would not such a Satellitula, at first very 

 slowly, and afterwards (as it had a longer and larger course, 

 through a denser and denser medium of Air, while in perigeo) 

 more rapidly increase in the brightness and length of its visible 

 or shooting course ? ; — has not, with respect to many at least of 

 these Satcllitulae, the transition taken place, from a shooting 

 Star to a Meteor ? ; — may not some of these latter, after ap- 

 pearing as a large and very dazzling Meteor (perhaps of a far 

 more imposing aspect than any which we have upon authentic 

 rccordj have, by long-repeated explosive exfoliations (producing 

 Meteoric sliowers of stones) become so reduced in size and so 

 roughened iu shape, as, through the Air's rct.istancc, no longer 



to 



