COINCIDENCES AND SUPERSTITIONS. 389 



have been considered as affording ample evidence of 

 my having become an Egyptian sorcerer.' The sur- 

 prising effect of the coincidence is increased when the 

 contents of this Egyptian manuscript are described. 

 6 It relates to the sale, not of a house or a field, but of 

 a portion of the collections and offerings made from 

 time to time on account or for the benefit of a certain 

 number of mummies of persons described at length 

 in very bad Greek, with their children and all their 

 households. 3 



The history of astronomy has in quite recent times 

 afforded a very remarkable instance of repeated coin- 

 cidences. I refer to the researches by which the 

 theory has been established, that meteors and comets 

 are so far associated that meteor systems travel in the 

 track of comets. It will readily be seen from the 

 following statements, all of which may be implicitly 

 relied upon, that the demonstration of this theory must 

 be regarded as partly due to singular good fortune : 

 There are two very remarkable meteor systems the 

 system which produces the November shooting-stars, 

 or Leonides, and that which produces the August 

 shooting-stars, or Perseides. It chanced that the year 

 1866 was the time when a great display of November 

 meteors was expected by astronomers. Hence, in the 

 years 1865 and 1866 considerable attention was 

 directed to the whole subject of shooting-stars. More- 

 over, so many astronomers watched the display of 

 1866, that very exact information was for the first 



