122 COSMOS. 



The Greek natural philosophers, who were but little dis- 

 posed to pursue observations, but evinced inexhaustible fer- 

 tility of imagination in giving the most various interpretation- 

 of half-perceived facts, have, however, left some hypotheses 

 regarding shooting stars and meteoric stones, which strikingly 

 accord with the views now almost universally admitted of the 

 cosmical process of these phenomena. " Falling stars," says 

 Plutarch, in his life of Lysander,* " are, according to the opi- 

 nion of some physicists, not eruptions of the etherial fire 

 extinguished in the air immediately after its ignition, nor yet 

 an inflammatory combustion of the air, which is dissolved in 

 large quantities in the upper regions of space; but these me- 

 teors are rather a fall of celestial bodies, which, in consequence 

 of a certain intermission in the rotatory force, and by the 

 impulse of some irregular movement, have been hurled down 

 not only to the inhabited portions of the Earth, but also 

 beyond it into the great ocean, where we cannot find them." 

 Diogenes of Apolloniaf expresses himself still more explicitly. 

 According to his views " Stars that are invisible, and conse- 



llth to the 13th of May, a period at which nearly the most rapid ad- 

 vance of heat takes place. It is much to be desired that this phenomenon 

 of depressed temperature, which some have felt inclined to attribute to 

 the melting of the ice in the north-east of Europe, should be also inves- 

 tigated in very remote spots, as in America, or in the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere. (Comp. Bull de I'Acad. Imp. de St. Petersbourg, 1843, t. i., 

 No. 4.) 



* Plut., Vita par. in Lysandro, cap. 22. The statement of Dama- 

 chos (Daimachos), that for 70 days continuously there was a fiery cloud 

 seen in the sky, emitting sparks like falling stars, and which then, sink- 

 ing nearer to the earth, let fall the stone of JSgos Potamos, " which, 

 however, was only a small part of it," is extremely improbable, since 

 the direction and velocity of the fire cloud would in that case of neces- 

 sity have to remain for so many days the same as those of the earth ; 

 and this in the fire ball of the 19th of July, 1686, described by Halley 

 (Trans., vol. xxix., p. 163) lasted only a few minutes. It is not altogether 

 certain whether Daimachos, the writer, trtpi ti)<rifif.iaq, was the same per- 

 son as Daimachos of Plataea, who was sent by Seleucus to India to the 

 son of Androcottos, and who was charged by Strabo with being "a 

 speaker of lies" (p. 70, Casaub.). From another passage of Plutarch 

 (Compar. Solonis c. Cop. cap. 4) we should almost believe that he was. 

 At all events we have here only the evidence of a very late author, who 

 wrote a century and a half after the fall of aerolites occurred in Thrace, 

 and whose authenticity is also doubted by Plutarch. 



f Stob., ed. Heeren, i. 25, p. 508 ; Plut., de plac. Philos., ii. 13. 



