3B4 SHOOTING STARS. SKCT. XXXVII. 



By far the most extraordinary part of the whole phe- 

 nomenon is that this radiant point was observed to re- 

 main stationaiy near the star y Leonis for more than 

 two hours and a half, which proved the source of the 

 meteoric shower to be altogether independent of the 

 earth's rotation, and its parallax showed it to be far 

 above the atmosphere. 



As a body could not be actually at rest in that posi- 

 tion, the group or nebula must either have been moving 

 round the earth or the sun. Had it been moving about 

 the earth, the course of the meteors would have been 

 tangential to its surface, whereas they fell almost per- 

 pendicularly, so that the earth in its annual revolution 

 must have met with the group. The bodies or the 

 parts of the nebula that were nearest must have been 

 attracted toward the earth by its gravity, and as they 

 were estimated to move at the rate of fourteen miles in 

 a second, they must have taken fire on entering our 

 atmosphere, and been consumed in their passage through 

 it. 



As all the circumstances of the phenomenon were 

 similar on the same day and during the same hours in 

 1832, and as extraordinary flights of shooting stars were 

 seen at many places both in Europe and America on 

 the 13th of November, 1834, 1835, and 1836, tending 

 also from a fixed point in the constellation Leo, it has 

 been conjectured, with much apparent probability, that 

 this nebula or group of bodies performs its revolution 

 round the sun in a period of about 182 days, in an ellip- 

 tical orbit, whose major axis is 119 millions of miles ; 

 and that its aphelion distance, where it comes in contact 

 with the earth's atmosphere, is about 95 millions of 

 miles, or nearly the same with the mean distance of 

 the earth from the sun. This body must have met 

 with disturbances after 1799, which prevented it from 

 encountering the earth for 32 years, and it may again 

 deviate from its path from the same cause. 



As early as the year 1833, Professor Olmsted, of 

 Yale College in the United States of America, had con- 

 jectured that the phenomenon of shooting stars origi- 

 nated in the zodiacal light, and his subsequent observa- 

 tions, continued for three successive years, have tended 



