METEOES AND AEROLITES. 299 



progress of the phenomena had greatly changed its apparent 

 place in the heavens. The value of this observation was at 

 once recognised. Sporadic shooting-stars are observed to 

 traverse the sky in all directions. But these multitudinous 

 meteors of a night, in their radiation from one point, showed 

 a common origin and the approach of the earth in its orbit 

 to some other revolving volume of matter, visible only 

 through the changes made by such approximation. 



Intelligence of this event, confirmed by other observers in 

 different localities, awakened a new and keener interest in 

 the subject. Eeference was made to the same date in ante- 

 cedent years, and several instances discovered in which about 

 the 12th of November extraordinary falls of shooting-stars 

 had occurred; the most remarkable that described by 

 Humboldt and Bompland in 1799, which occurred to their 

 observation at Cumana, and was seen very extensively over 

 the earth. Earnest expectation also was directed towards the 

 future. On the night of the 12th November, 1834, shooting- 

 stars were very numerously seen by the same American 

 observers, and proceeding from the same point in the heavens-; 

 but the light of the moon rendered the results partial and 

 uncertain. In succeeding years the phenomena were more 

 vaguely seen or altogether absent; except in 1837 and 1838, 

 when they recurred, but more partially as to localities. In 

 the former year, for instance, they formed a striking spectacle 

 in some parts of England while scarcely visible in Germany. 

 Though M. Saigey imputes much exaggeration in numbers to 

 the Transatlantic reports, they have been admitted by the 

 most eminent men of science Arago, Biot, Herschel, 

 Humboldt, Encke, &c., as fully proving the periodical 

 return of certain groups of asteroids, or of the matter gene- 

 rating them. To Encke we owe the calculation that the point 

 in Leo, from which these November meteorites issued, is 

 precisely the direction in which the earth was moving in its 



