EXPECTED METEOR SHOWER. 119 



it plunged into and got bewildered among the rings of mete- 

 orolites, which astronomers more than suspected ? 



Between 1866, when Sir John Herschel thus wrote, and 

 1872, when again Biela's comet was sought in vain, a series 

 of Grange discoveries had been made respecting meteors, 

 which led astronomers to believe that, even though the 

 missing comet might never again be seen as a comet, we might 

 still learn something respecting its present condition. It had 

 been noticed that the remarkable comet of 1862 (comet u 

 of that year) crossed the earth's track near the place where 

 she is on August 10-11, the time of the August meteors, 

 called the Tears of St. Lawrence in old times, but now known 

 as the Perseids, because they seem to radiate from the con- 

 stellation Perseus. Later the idea occurred to Schiaparelli, 

 an Italian astronomer, that the August meteors may travel 

 along the path of that comet. He could not prove this, but 

 he advanced very strong evidence in favour of the opinion, 

 for he found that bodies travelling along the path of the 

 comet of 1862 would seem to radiate from Perseus as they 

 traversed the earth's atmosphere. It was as if a person sus- 

 pected that a steam- cloud seen on a distant railway track 

 belonged to a particular train, and, though unable actually 

 to prove this, was yet able to show that, with the wind and 

 weather then prevailing, that train, travelling at its customary 

 rate, would leave a steam-cloud behind it precisely of the ap- 

 parent length and position of the observed steam-cloud. This 

 cloud might have the observed position though otherwise pro- 

 duced, yet the evidence would be thought strongly to favour 

 the supposition that it came from the train in question. In like 

 manner the August meteors might be travelling on any one 

 of a great number of tracks intersecting the e'arth's orbit in the 

 place occupied by the earth on August 10-11 ; yet it was at 

 least a striking coincidence that a flight of meteors travelling in 

 the orbit of the chief comet of 1862 would seem to radiate from 

 the constellation Perseus, precisely as the August meteors do. 



While astronomers were still discussing the ideas of 

 Schiaparelli, Professor Newton of Yale College, in America, 



