ATTOOTJTES. 115 



Palmer recalled to recollection the fall of meteors in 1799, 

 at Newhaven, which was first described by Ellicott and 

 myself ( 72 ), and which was shown, by the obervations which 

 I brought together, to have extended simultaneously over the 

 new continent, from the Equator to New Herrnhut in Green- 

 land in lat. 64 14', and from 46 to 82 of west longitude 

 from Paris. The identity of the two epochs was perceived with 

 astonishment. The stream which was seen over the whole 

 sky, on the 12th and 13th of November, 1833, from Jamaica 

 to Boston, recurred on the nights of the 13th and 14th of 

 November, 1834, in the United States, but the display 

 was less brilliant. 



A second equally regular periodic shower, that of the 

 Feast of St. Lawrence, takes place between the 9th and 14th 

 of August. Muschenbrock ( 73 ) had called attention, in the 

 middle of the last century, to the frequency of meteors in 

 the month of August ; but their regular return about the 

 epoch of St. Lawrence's Day was first made out by Quetelet, 

 Gibers, and Benzenberg. No doubt other periodically re- 

 curring showers ( 74 ) will in time be discovered, possibly 

 about the 22nd and 25th of April, the 6th and 12th of 

 December, and judging from the falls of aerolites recounted 

 by Capocchi perhaps also from the 27th to the 29th of 

 November, or on the 17th of July. 



Independent as all the occurrences of this kind have 

 hitherto seemed of local circumstances, such as latitude, 

 temperature, and climatic relations, there is an accompanying 

 phsenomenon of which it would be wrong to omit the notice, 

 although the coincidence may, perhaps, have been purely 

 accidental. The Aurora Borealis showed itself with great 

 intensity during the occurrence of the most magnificent dis- 



