A RECENT STAR SHOWER. 205 



by millions. But this is far from being all. To catch 

 a single visitant from outer space is a task altogether 

 easy by comparison with the task of catching a group 

 of such visitants. Now, to take a single instance, the 

 November meteor stream occupies at present a region 

 many millions of times larger than the sun : it has 

 supplied already many myriads of falling-stars, and at 

 a very moderate computation it contains many billions 

 of the bodies whose fall into our atmosphere produces 

 meteoric displays. In its present condition, not the 

 united power of all the giant planets could reverse the 

 work originally (according to theory) executed by 

 Uranus (one of the least of them), and send the No- 

 vember meteors away into outer space. But with every 

 allowance for the process of dispersion which is assumed 

 to have lengthened and widened and deepened this 

 system, is it conceivable that it was ever so compact 

 as to enable Uranus to execute the neat strategic move- 

 ment by which he is supposed to have captured the whole 

 flight ? If Schiaparelli himself, who has taken a chief 

 part in advocating the theory, is to be believed, a flight 

 of meteors arriving from outer space would necessarily 

 assume a cylindrical or lengthened shape long before it 

 reached the neighbourhood of our system. In this case 

 Uranus certainly could not have captured more than a 

 small portion of the original flight of meteors, and we 

 are left to form the most stupendous conceptions of 

 that cloud of celestial visitants, if a mere fragment 

 formed the November meteor stream. But taking 

 only what we know, we see that the November meteor 



