AEROLITES. 113 



Muschenbroek,* as early as in the middle of the last cen- 

 tury, drew attention to the frequency of meteors in the 

 month of August ; but their certain periodic return about 

 the time of St. Lawrence's day was first shown by Quetclet, 

 Olbers, and Benzenberg. We shall, no doubt, in time discover 

 other periodically appearing streams,! probably about the 

 22nd to the 25th of April, between the 6th and 12th of 



* Compare Muschenbroek, Introd. ad Phil. Nat., 1762, t. ii. p. 1061; 

 Howard, On the Climate of London, vol. ii. p. 23, observations of the 

 year 1806 ; seven years, therefore, after the earliest observations of 

 Brandes (Benzenberg, iiber Sternschnuppen, s. 240-244) ; the August 

 observations of Thomas Forster, in Quetelet, op. cit. p. 438-453; 

 those of Adolph Erman, Boguslawski and Kreil, in Schum. Jahrb., 

 1838, s. 317-330. Regarding the point of origin in Perseus, on the 

 10th of August, 1839, see the accurate measurements of Bessel and 

 Erman (Schum. Astr. Nachr., No. 385 und 428) ; but on the 10th of 

 August, 1837, the path does not appear to have been retrograde; see 

 Arago, in Comptes Rendus, 1837, t. ii. p. 183. 



t On the 25th of April, 1095, "innumerable eyes in France saw stars 

 falling from heaven as thickly as hail," (ut grando, nisi lucerent, pro 

 densitate putaretur ; Baldr. p. 88), and this occurrence was regarded 

 by the Council of Clermont as indicative of the great movement in 

 Christendom. (Wilken, Gesch. der Kreuzzilge, bd. i. s. 75.) On the 

 25th of April, 1800, a great fall of stars was observed in Virginia and 

 Massachusetts ; it was " a fire of rockets that lasted two hours." Arago 

 was the first to call attention to this " trainee d'asteroides," as a re- 

 eurriiig phenomenon. (Annuaire, 1836, p. 297.) The falls of aerolites 

 in the beginning of the month of December, are also deserving of notice. 

 In reference to their periodic recurrence as a meteoric stream, we may 

 mention the early observation of Brandes on the night of the 6th and 

 7th of December, 1798 (when he counted 2000 falling stars), and very 

 probably the enormous fall of aerolites that occurred at the Rio Assu, 

 near the village of Macao, in the Brazils, on the llth of December, 1836. 

 <Brandes, Unterludt. fur Freundc der Physik, 1825, heft i. s. 65, and 

 Comptes Rendus, t. v. p. 211.) Capocci, in the interval between 1809 

 and 1839, a space of 30 years, has discovered twelve authenticated cases 

 of aerolites occurring between the 27th and 29th of November, besides 

 others on the 13th of November, the 10th of August, tnd the 17th of 

 July. (Comptes Rendus, t. xi. p. 357.) It is singular that in the 

 portion of the Earth's path corresponding with the months of January 

 and February, and probably also with March, no periodic streams of 

 falling stars or aerolites have as yet been- noticed ; although when in 

 the South Sea in the year 1803, I observed on the 15th of March a 

 remarkably large number of falling stars, and they were seen to fall as 

 in a swarm in the city of Quito, shortly before the terrible earthquake 

 of Riobamba on the 4th of February, 1797. From the phenomena 



