ZODIACAL LIGHT. 127 



nishment that we touch,, weigh, and analyse a substance 

 appertaining to the world without : the imagination is sti- 

 mulated, and the intellect aroused and animated by a spec- 

 tacle, in which the uncultivated mind sees only a train of 

 fading sparks in the clear sky, and apprehends in the black 

 stone which falls from the thundering cloud only the rude 

 product of some wild force of nature. 



If the asteroids, on the description of which I have lin- 

 gered with pleasure, may seeni in some degree to resemble 

 comets by the smallness of their mass and the variety of their 

 paths, they differ essentially from those bodies in being visible 

 to us only at the instant of their destruction, or when, 

 arrested by the earth, they become luminous by ignition. 



To complete our view of all that belongs to the 

 solar system, which since the discovery of the small 

 planets, of the comets of short period, and of the meteoric 

 asteroids, appears so complex and so rich in forms, we 

 have yet to consider the Zodiacal Light, to which 

 allusion has already been made. Those who have dwelt 

 long in the zone of Palms, must retain a pleasing re- 

 membrance of the mild radiance of this phsenomenon, 

 which rising pyramidally, illumines a portion of the un- 

 varying length of the tropical nights. I have seen it 

 occasionally shine with a brightness greater than that of the 

 Milky Way near the constellation of Sagittarius ; and this 

 not only in the dry and highly rarefied atmosphere of the 

 summits of the Andes, at elevations of thirteen to fifteen 

 thousand feet, but also in the boundless grassy plains or 

 llanos of Venezuela, and on the sea-coast under the ever 



clear sky of Cumana. The phenomenon is one of peculiar 

 VOL. i. L 



