XXIV NOTES. 



f 9 } $ 111. The first edition of Chladni's important memoir " On the 

 Origin of tlaa Maas of Iron found by Pallas, and of other dimilar Masses," 

 appeared two months before the fall of stones at Sienna, and two years before 

 iichtenberp; stated in the Gottingen Taschenbuch "that stones arrive in 

 our atmosphere from the regions of universal space." Compare also Gibers, 

 Letter to J*enzenberg, 18th of November, 1837, in Benzeuberg's Memoir on 

 Shooting Stars, p. 186. 



O p. 111. Encke, in Poggend. Annalen, Bd. xxsiii. (1834), S. 213. 

 Arago, Annnaire, 1836, p. 291. Two letters from myself to Benzenberg, 

 19th of May and 22d of October, 1837, on a conjectured retrogression of 

 the nodes in the orbit of periodical streams of shooting stars, (Benzeuberg, 

 Sternschnuppen, S. 207 and 209). Olbers subsequently adopted this opinion 

 of the gradual retardation of the November phenomenon. (Ast. Nach. 1838, 

 N. 372, S. 180). If I may combine two of the showers of falling stars 

 mentioned by Arabian writers, with the epochs which Boguslawski has found 

 for the fourteenth century, I obtain the following more or less accordant ele- 

 ments of the movement of the nodes : 



In October 902, on the night when King Ibrahim-ben- Ahmed died, there was 

 a great fall of shooting- stars, "like a fiery rain." The year was called, on this 

 account, the year of stars, (Conde, Hist, de la domin. de los Arabes, p. 346). 



On the 19th of October, 1202, the stars were falling the whole night 

 through. " They fell like locusts." (Comptes-rendus, 1837, T. i. p. 294 : 

 and Fraehn, in the Bulletin de 1'Academie de St.-Petersbourg, T. iii. p. 308). 



On the 21st of October (old style), 1366, " die sequente post festum xi. 

 millia Virginum, ab hora matutina usque ad horam primam, visse sunt quasi 

 stellse de coelo cadere continuo, et in tanta multitudine quad nemo narrare 

 snfficit." This remarkable notice, which will be again alluded to in the text, 

 was found, by the younger von Boguslawski, in Benesse (de Horowic) de 

 Weitmil or Weithmiil, Chronicon Ecclesise Pragensis, p. 389. The chronicle 

 is also found in the second part of the Scriptores rerum Bohemicarum, by 

 Pelzel and Dobrowsky, 1784 (Schum. Astr. Nachr. Dec. 1839). 



On the night 9 10 Nov. 1787, many shooting stars were observed in 

 Southern Germany, and especially at Manheim, by Hemmer (Kamtz, Meteor. 

 Th. iii. S. 237.) 



After midnight, on the 12th of November, 1799, the prodigious fall of 

 shooting stars at Gumana, which has been described by Bonpland and myself; 

 and which was observed over a great part of the earth (Relat. Hist. t. i. pp. 

 519527). 



