THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN ASTRONOMY 



these fragments were separated by many millions of 

 miles ; and in 1852, when the comet was due again, as' 

 tronomers looked for it in vain. It had been completely 

 shattered. 



What had become of the fragments ? At that time 

 no one positively knew. But the question was to be 

 answered presently. It chanced that just at this period 

 astronomers were paying much attention to a class of 

 bodies which they had hitherto somewhat neglected, the 

 familiar shooting-stars or meteors. The studies of Pro- 

 fessor Newton of Yale and Professor Adams of Cam- 

 bridge with particular reference to the great meteor- 

 shower of November, 1866, which Professor Newton 

 had predicted, and shown to be recurrent at intervals of 

 thirty-three years, showed that meteors are not mere 

 sporadic swarms of matter flying at random, but exist 

 in isolated swarms, and sweep about the sun in regular 

 elliptical orbits. 



Presently it was shown by the Italian astronomer 

 Schiaparelli that one of these meteor swarms moves 

 in the orbit of a previously observed comet, and other 

 coincidences of the kind were soon forthcoming. The 

 conviction grew that meteor swarms are really the 

 debris of comets ; and this conviction became a prac- 

 tical certainty when, in November, 1872, the earth 

 crossed the orbit of the ill-starred Biela, and a shower 

 of meteors came whizzing into our atmosphere in lieu of 

 the lost comet. 



And so at last the full secret was out. The awe-inspir- 

 ing comet, instead of being the planetary body it had all 

 along been regarded, is really nothing more nor less 

 than a great aggregation of meteoric particles, which 

 have become clustered together out in space somewhere, 



59 



