22O LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



composite nature of cometic structure. But when all 

 this has been said, we are little nearer to the solution 

 of the mysterious problems which comets present to us. 

 They still teach us, as they have so long taught, that 

 * there are more things in heaven and earth than are 



dreamed of in our philosophy.' 



Spectator. 



THE AUGUST METEORS. 



ON the nights of August 10 to 14, and sometimes till 

 several nights later, meteors or shooting stars, be- 

 longing to the family known as the Perseides, may be 

 generally seen, at times showing in great numbers. 

 Humboldt remarks that, on the festival of St. Lawrence 

 (August 10), * fiery tears ' (supposed to be the saint's) 

 fell from heaven, and he quotes Dr. Thomas Forster as 

 saying that in a manuscript preserved in the library 

 of Christ's College, Cambridge, written in the tenth 

 century by a monk, the 10th of August is distinguished 

 by the word * Meteorodes.' Thomas Forster seems to 

 have overlooked the effect of difference of style. In 

 the seventeenth century, when the style was corrected, 

 eleven days were dropped 1 to set the calendar right; in 



1 The day folio-wing September 2, 1752, was called September 14. 

 In some popular books of astronomy, September 3 is substituted for 

 September 2, and the singular statement made that calling the day 

 following September 3 September 14 involved dropping eleven days. 

 See Lockyer's Elements of Astronomy, and other such works. 



