NOTES. 



comet of 1766 with the third comet of 1819 ; and N. 237 of the same work, 

 on the identity of the comet of 1743 and the fourth comet of 1819. 



C 56 ) p. 102. Laugier, in the Comptes-rendus dcs Stances de 1' Academic, 

 1843, t. xvi. p. 1006. 



( 57 ) p. 105. Fries, Vorlesungen iiher die Sternkunde, 1833, S. 262267. 

 A not very happy instance of a comet of " good omen" is met with in Seneca, 

 Nat. Qusest. vii. 17 and 21 j he says of comets, " quern nos Neronis win- 

 cipatu Isctissimo vidimus et qui cometis detraxit infamiam." 



C 58 ) p. 107. A friend of mine, accustomed to exact trigonometrical 

 measurements, in the year 1788, at Popayan, a town situated in 2 C 26, N. lat. 

 and at an elevation of 5520 feet (5880 English), saw at noon, with the 

 sun shining brightly in a cloudless sky, his whole room illuminated by a ball 

 of fire. He was standing with his back to the window, and on turning round 

 great part of the track left by the meteor was still brilliantly marked. These 

 phenomena among different nations and tribes havs been connected with very 

 different names and associations. In the Lithuanian Mythology a fanciful 

 but graceful and noble symbolical meaning has been attached to them. It was 

 said that when a child was born, the " Verpeja" began to spin the thread of 

 the infant's destiny, that each of these threads was attached to a star, and that 

 when death approached the person, the thread broke and the star fell glimmer- 

 ing to the earth and was extinguished. (Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 

 1843, S. 685.) 



( 59 ) p. 107. From the account of Denison Olmsted, Professor at Yab 

 College, Newhaven, Connecticut. Vide " Poggend. Annalen der Physik," 

 Bd. xxx. S. 194. Kepler, who excluded balls of fire and shooting stars from 

 the dominion of astronomy, considering them as "meteors produced by terrestrial 

 exhalations mixing with the higher ether," expresses himself on the whole with 

 great care respecting them. He says, " Stellse cadentes sunt materia viscida 

 inflammata. Earum aliquse inter cadendum absumuntur, aliquse vere in terram 

 cadunt, pondere suo tractse. Nee est dissimile vero, quasdam conglobatas esse 

 ex materia foeculenta, in ipsam auram setheream immixta: exque setheris 

 regione, tractu rectilineo, per ae'rem trajicere, ceu minutos cometas, occulta 

 causa motus utrorumque. (Kepler, Epit. Astron. Copernicanse, t. i. p. 80.) 



t 60 ) p. 107. Relation Historique, t. i. p. 80, 213, and 527. If in shoot- 

 ing stars, as in comets, we distinguish between the head or nucleus, and the 

 tail or train, we shall recognise that the greater length and brilliancy observed 

 in the train in tropical countries, is to be attributed to the greater transparency 

 of the atmosphere ; the phenomenon itself is the same, but is more easily and 



