42 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



comet which travels along the course which the meteors 

 of this system were pursuing. 



We paused to study, with not a little interest, a 

 system which belongs to a class of cosmical objects 

 playing, as would appear, a most important part in the 

 economy of the universe. The members of this meteor 

 family were small few of them exceeding a few inches 

 in diameter and separated by relatively enormous 

 distances. Except in the case of a few sets of two or 

 three or more of these bodies, which evidently formed 

 subordinate schemes,we could not perceive any instances 

 in which any meteor was separated by less than a 

 hundred miles from the nearest of its fellows, inso- 

 much that it was impossible for us to perceive more 

 than a very few of these objects at a time. More 

 commonly, indeed, two or three thousand miles sepa- 

 rated each meteor from its immediate neighbours. 

 Yet the actual number of the bodies forming this 

 system must be enormous, for we found that the system 

 extended in the direction in which we were travelling, 

 for no less than a million and a half of miles, and its 

 longitudinal extension that is, its extension measured 

 along the orbit of the system must be far more enor- 

 mous, even if the system does not form a closed ring, 

 as in other cases known to terrestrial astronomers. It 

 is, however, somewhat unlikely that this can be the 

 case ; for we observed that the meteors were travelling 

 at the rate of about twenty-six miles per second, which 

 implies (so, at least, X. asserted) that the path of these 

 meteors is a very eccentric one, extending farther into 



