156 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS, 



But at present our ideas about the meteoric 

 components of the solar system are very different. 

 While we know certainly that neither the August nor 

 the November systems can throw the earth into 

 shadow in February and May, we know just as certainly 

 that there are meteor systems myriads, indeed, of 

 meteor systems which are much better fitted to cloud 

 the solar rays than are those two. 



In the first place, we know that the August and 

 November systems are simply those two meteor 

 streams, or incomplete rings of meteors among 

 several hundred such systems through which the 

 earth passes which chance to be so situated as to 

 produce the most conspicuous and remarkable star- 

 showers. There are doubtless many among the 

 hundreds of others which are far more important 

 numerically, and as regards the size of their individual 

 components, than are these two. But others we 

 merely skirt, or we have never fairly gauged, because 

 the earth has not yet chanced to pass through their 

 richer portions. These two the earth has passed 

 through more centrally (though we do not even yet 

 know that the earth has passed through the centre of 

 either), and it has also happened that the earth has 

 passed through those parts of these systems which are 

 most richly strewn with meteors the gemmed region 

 of the meteor-ring though, again, we do not yet 

 know the true wealth of either system. To suppose 

 that those of which we know only by passage through 

 their outskirts are of inferior wealth, that the two we 



