422 SHOOTING STAHS. SECT. XXXVI. 



see that every one of the luminous bodies, without exception, 

 moved in lines which converged in one point in the heavens : 

 none of them started from that point ; but their paths, when 

 traced backwards, met in it like rays in a focus, and the manner 

 of their fall showed that they descended from it in nearly parallel 

 straight lines towards the earth. 



By far the most extraordinary part of the whole phenomenon 

 is, that this radiant point was observed to remain stationary near 

 the star y Leonis for more than two hours and a half, which 

 proved the source of the meteoric shower to be altogether inde- 

 pendent of the earth's rotation, and its parallax showed it to be 

 far above the atmosphere. 



As a body could not be actually at rest in that position, the 

 group or nebula must either have been moving round the earth 

 or the sun. Had it been moving about the earth, the course of 

 the meteors would have been tangential to its surface ; whereas 

 they fell almost perpendicularly, so that the earth in its annual 

 revolution must have met with the group. The bodies or the 

 parts of the nebula that were nearest must have been attracted 

 towards the earth by its gravity, and, as they were estimated to 

 move at the rate of fourteen miles in a second, they must have 

 taken fire on entering our atmosphere, and been consumed in 

 their passage through it. 



As all the circumstances of the phenomena were similar on the 

 same day and during the same hours in 1832, and as extra- 

 ordinary flights of shooting stars were seen at many places both 

 in Europe and America on the- 13th of November, 1834, 1835, 

 and 1836, tending also from a fixed point in the constellation 

 Leo, it has been conjectured, with much apparent probability, 

 that this nebula or group of bodies performs its revolution round 

 the sun in a period of about 182 days, in an elliptical orbit, whose 

 major axis is 119 millions of miles ; and that its aphelion dis- 

 tance, where it comes in contact with the earth's atmosphere, is 

 about 95 millions of miles, or nearly the same with the mean 

 distance of the earth from the sun. This body must have met 

 with disturbances after 1799, which prevented it from encounter- 

 ing the earth for 32 years, and it may again deviate from its path 

 from the same cause. 



It is now well ascertained that great showers of shooting stars 

 occur also on the 12th of August, whose point of divergence is 



