AEROLITES. 



141 



between four and six o'clock in the morning. The night was remarkably fine. Not a cloud 

 obscured the firmament. Upon attentive observation, the materials of the shower were 

 found to exhibit three distinct varieties : 1. Phosphoric lines formed one class apparently 

 described by a point. These were the most abundant. They passed along the sky with 

 immense velocity, as numerous as the flakes of a sharp snow-storm. 2. Large fire-balls 

 formed another constituency of the scene. These darted forth at intervals along the arch 

 of the sky, describing an arc of 30 or 40 in a few seconds. Luminous trains marked 

 their path, which remained in view for a number of minutes, and in some cases for half 

 an hour or more. The trains were commonly white, but the various prismatic colours 

 occasionally appeared, vividly and beautifully displayed. Some of these fire-balls, "or 

 shooting stars, were of enormous size. Dr. Smith of North Carolina observed one which 

 appeared larger than the full moon at the horizon. " I was startled," he remarks, " by the 

 splendid light in which the surrounding scene was exhibited, rendering even small objects 

 quite visible." The same, or a similar luminous body, seen at Newhaven, passed off in a 

 north-west direction, and exploded near the star Capella. 3. Another class consisted of 

 luminosities of irregular form, which remained nearly stationary for a considerable time, 

 like the one that gleamed aloft over the Niagara Falls. The remarkable circumstance is 

 testified by every witness, that all the luminous bodies, without a single exception, moved 

 in lines, which converged in one and the same point of the heavens, a little to the south- 

 east of the zenith. They none of them started from this point, but their direction, to 

 whatever part of the horizon it might be, when traced backwards, led to a common focus. 

 Conceive the centre of the diagram to be nearly overhead, and a proximate idea may be 



formed of the character of the scene, and 



Eyggng^y^g^ " the uniform radiation of the meteors 



from the same source. The position of 

 this radiant point among the stars was 

 near y Lepnis. It remained stationary 

 with respect to the stars during the 

 whole of the exhibition. Instead of 

 accompanying the earth in its diurnal 

 motion eastward, it attended the stars 

 in their apparent movement westward. 

 The source of the meteoric shower was 

 thus independent of the earth's rotation, 

 and this shows its position to have been 

 in the regions of space exterior to our 



atmosphere. According to the American Professor, Dr. Olmstead, it could not have 

 been less than 2238 miles above the earth's surface. 



The attention of astronomers in Europe, and all over the world, was, as may be imagined, 

 strongly roused by intelligence of this celestial display on the western continent : and as 

 the occurrence of a meteoric shower had now been observed for three years successively, 

 at a coincident era, it was inferred that a return of this fiery hail-storm might be expected 

 in succeeding Novembers. Arrangements were therefore made to watch the heavens on 

 the nights of the 12th and 13th in the following years at the principal observatories ; and 

 though no such imposing spectacle as that of 1833 has been witnessed, yet extraordinary 

 flights of shooting stars have been observed in various places at the periodic, time, tending 

 also from a fixed point in the constellation Leo. They were seen in Europe and America 

 on November 13th, 1834. The following results of simultaneous observation were ob- 

 tained by Arago from different parts of France on the nights of November 12th and 13th, 

 1836 : 



