THE EARTH IN METEORIC SHADOW. 173 



effect as the one-inch meteor produced, though their 

 mass is only equal to it, but an effect no less than one- 

 hundred times greater. 1 So that by merely supposing 

 two sphere inches of matter, one as a single globe, the 

 other distributed in tiny grains each a hundredth of 

 an inch in diameter, throughout five cubic miles of 

 space, in a system having the extent we have con- 

 sidered above, we should have not a 7,000th part but 

 more than a 70th of the sun's light and heat obstructed. 

 This if continued for three days would correspond in 

 quantity to the cutting off of the sun's entire supply 

 of light and heat during more than one hour. The 

 effects of such a sun-shadowing, even though distributed 

 over three days, could not fail to be recognisable. 



It should be added that the mere visibility of a 

 meteor system during total solar eclipse implies that it 

 must be many times more richly aggregated than any 

 meteor system encumbered by the earth, shows in 

 fact, that the meteor systems so seen must be at least 

 as rich as we have supposed in the above reasoning. 



Suppose, now, that two or three meteor systems 

 chanced to be interposed in the way supposed above. 

 Then the effects deduced would be doubled or tripled ; 

 and not merely a recognisable, but a marked loss of 

 solar heat would ensue. If, for instance, it so chanced 



1 Each would have a diameter of only one-hundredth of the dia- 

 meter of the larger ; and, its diameter being one hundred times as largo 

 as theirs, it would hide a space on the sun's surface ten thousand times 

 as great as the space hidden by each of the others ; but as there are a 

 million of them, they would collectively hide a space one hundred times 

 as large. 



