100 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP, xi 



Scotland, and Ireland. In London it appeared like a 

 ball of fire as large as the moon ; at Exeter the light was 

 like that of the sun. It was followed by a broad stream 

 of light, and burst with a report like that of a cannon, 

 with a great display of red sparks like a huge sky-rocket ; 

 but as it was then over the sea, between Devonshire and 

 the coast of Brittany, its fragments were not recoverable. 

 Dr. Winston, ISTewton's successor as professor of mathe- 

 matics at Cambridge, who published an account of it, 

 calculated its height over London as 51 miles, and over 

 Devonshire 39 miles. 



Falling stars, sometimes seen singly, at other times in 

 considerable numbers, as well as the less frequent but 

 larger fireballs above described, appeared to be con- 

 nected phenomena, although little was really known 

 about them till the early part of this century, when they 

 began to be more carefully studied. By observations of 

 the same meteor or fireball at distant localities, its alti- 

 tude, and the velocity with which it moved, were ascer- 

 tained, and these were always found to be so great as to 

 show that these objects could not have a terrestrial 

 origin. It was soon observed that showers of falling 

 stars occurred about the same time every year, with dis- 

 plays of great brilliancy at long intervals; and on these 

 occasions the meteors all appeared to radiate from cer- 

 tain definite points in the sky. Thus in November they 

 seemed to originate in the constellation Leo, and in 

 August in Perseus, while others apparently belong to 

 distinct constellations. The only way of explaining 

 these appearances seemed to be that there were streams 

 of small bodies travelling in elliptic orbits round the sun, 

 and that the earth crossed these orbits at fixed points 



