I 



and Temporary Stars. 501 



plunge into the dense luciferous sether which invests the earth, 

 they cause it to bui'n and become luminous around them. The 

 tremendous pressure which gives birth to such brilliant displays, 

 is felt several hundred feet from the meteorite itself, especially 

 when it sweeps along the verge of our aerial atmosphere ; for in 

 this case the violent encounter drives the particles of rarefied air 

 through the more subtle sether, and enlarges the sphere of the 

 illumination. It is only to such causes that meteoric bodies can 

 be indebted for the immense globes of light by which they are 

 enveloped ; and these seem to exhibit the greatest splendour when 

 their course is nearly parallel to the horizon. 



To remove some misapprehensions respecting this theory, I 

 deem it necessary to state that the fluid concerned in producing 

 meteoric light cannot belong to the meteor itself, but must be 

 regarded as part of the earth's photosphere. From his last re- 

 port on luminous meteors, it would seem that Professor Powell 

 has understood me as maintaining that it is the sether which me- 

 teoric masses themselves collect from space that burns on enter- 

 ing our atmosphere, and becomes a source of their heat and light. 

 I must say, however, that this is not the idea which I intended to 

 convey in my writings, and that I do not believe that any ap- 

 preciable quantity of sether or of inflammable gas could be con- 

 fined by the feeble attractive force of such small bodies^ especially 

 during their rapid flight through our aerial ocean. I have in 

 some instances alluded to the compression of the setherial fluid 

 by falling meteorites, without stating the precise manner in which 

 it is afi^ected ; and as the time at which my work must have 

 reached England could have permitted only a partial examination 

 of its contents, there was too much room for a misconception of 

 my views ; and I can attach no blame to the eminent Professor 

 who has honoured me with a kind allusion to my humble labours 

 in the cause of science. 



The possibility of meteoric phsenomena occurring on a colossal 

 scale on some celestial spheres, might be a proper subject for 

 scientific inquiry. According to Professor William Thomson, 

 the solar heat and light are produced by meteors continually fall- 

 ing to the sun ; and he supposes that the precipitation of these 

 bodies is so abundant that they raise all parts of the solar surface 

 sixty feet every year. If we judge of the size of these cosmical 

 masses from such as visit the earth, the immense swarms of them 

 required to support the solar brilliancy for a thousand years must 

 have an amount of surface about sixty thousand times as great 

 as that of the sun ; and their efl'ccts in intercepting and reflectng 

 his light would be great in ])roportion. Such an immense host 

 of meteoric stones would be ahnost sufficient to cause a perpetual 

 eclipse of our central luminary, if they were all confined within 



