144 A CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN ASTRONOMY. 



relation to comets that the small planets 

 between Mars and Jupiter have to the larger 

 planets." In the third chapter of his ' Le 

 Stelle Cadenti' he explicitly states that 

 "the meteoric currents are the products of 

 the dissolution of comets, and consist of minute 

 particles which certain comets have abandoned 

 along their orbits, by reason of the disintegrat- 

 ing force which the Sun and planets exert on 

 the rare materials of which they are composed." 

 In 1878 Alexander Stewart Herschel (born 

 1836), son of Sir John Herschel, and a famous 

 meteoric observer, published a list of known or 

 suspected coincidences of meteoric and cometary 

 orbits, amounting to seventy -six. Meanwhile 

 much progress has since been made in the 

 observation of meteoric showers and the deter- 

 mination of their radiant points. In this branch 

 of astronomy, by far the greatest name is that 

 of William Frederick Denning, the self-made 

 English astronomer. Born at Redpost, in 

 Somerset, in 1848, his career of meteoric ob- 

 servation commenced in 1866. For the past 

 forty years he has attentively devoted him- 

 self to the observation of meteors. From 1872 

 to 1903 he determined the radiant points of 

 no fewer than 1179 meteoric showers. In 

 addition to this, he published, in 1899, a 



