CH. xxxii. METEORS. 307 



of the sun and the planets, with their satellites, but that 

 myriads of smaller bodies are also moving in large orbits 

 around our sun. Every one has heard of falling or shoot- 

 ing stars, and most people have probably seen one or more 

 of these bright meteors rush across the sky on a calm 

 summer evening, and then vanish as suddenly as it ap- 

 peared. The rude Lithuanian peasants have a touching 

 legend about these falling stars. * To every new-born 

 child,' they say, * there is attached an invisible thread, and 

 this thread ends in a star ; when that child dies the thread 

 breaks, and the light of the star is quenched as it falls to 

 the earth.' Science has taught us a different, but a not less 

 wonderful history. It is now known that these meteors are 

 solid stones, 'pocket planets' as Humboldt called them, 

 which form long elliptical rings round the sun, many of 

 which cross our orbit in various directions. When we pass 

 through one of these rings, the stones rush through our 

 atmosphere so fast that they become heated, and give out 

 light for a short time, till they disperse into fine dust and 

 vanish. When they are too large to be consumed before 

 they reach the earth, they fall, often with great violence, and 

 are split into countless fragments. A large collection of 

 these meteoric stones is to be seen in the British Museum, 

 some weighing hundreds of pounds, others only a few grains. 

 They have been analysed, and are found to be composed 

 chiefly of iron, tin, sulphur, phosphorus, carbon, and oxygen. 

 Before the present century all that was known about 

 these bodies was very vague and unsatisfactory. From time 

 to time accounts of stone-falls came from different parts of 

 the world, but they were not much attended to, and people 

 found it difficult to believe that stones and mineral masses 

 actually fell from the sky on to the earth. But in 1803 a 

 fiery globe was seen to rush over the town of Aigle, in Nor- 

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