142 



SCENERY OF THE HEAVENS. 



Place. 



Paris, at the Observatory 

 Dieppe - 

 Arras 

 Strasburg 



Meteors. 



170 



36 



27 



85 



Place. 



Von Altimarl 

 Angou - 

 Rochefort 

 Havre - 



Meteors. 



75 



49 



23 



300 



On November 12th, 1837, at eight o'clock in the evening, the attention of observers in 

 various parts of Great Britain was directed to a bright luminous body, apparently proceeding 

 from the north, which, after making a rapid descent, in the manner of a rocket, suddenly 

 burst, and scattering its particles into various beautiful forms vanished in the atmosphere. 

 This was succeeded by others all similar to the first, both in shape and the manner of its 

 ultimate disappearance. The whole display terminated at ten o'clock, when dark clouds 

 which continued up to a late hour, overspread the earth, preventing any further observation. 

 In the November of 1838, at the same date, the falling stars were abundant at Vienna : and 

 one of remarkable brilliancy and size, as large as the full moon in the zenith, was seen on 

 the 13th by M.Verusmor off Cherburg, passing in the direction of Cape La Hogue, a long 

 luminous train marking its course through the sky. The same year, the non-commissioned 

 officers in the island of Ceylon were instructed to look out for the falling stars. Only a 

 few appeared at the usual time ; but on the 5th of December, from nine o'clock till midnight, 

 the shower was incessant, and the number defied all attempts at counting them. 



Professor Olmstead, an eminent man of science, himself an eye-witness of the great 

 meteoric shower on the American continent, after carefully collecting and comparing facts, 

 proposed the following theory : The meteors of November 13th, 1833 emanated from a 

 nebulous body which was then pursuing its way along with the earth around the sun ; 

 that this body continues to revolve around the sun in an elliptical orbit, but little inclined 

 to the plane of the ecliptic, and having its aphelion near the orbit of the earth ; and 

 finally, that the body has a period of nearly six months, and that its perihelion is a little 

 within the orbit of Mercury. The diagram represents the ellipse supposed to be 



described, E being the orbit of the earth, M that of 

 mercury, and N that of the assumed nebula, its 

 aphelion distance being about 95 millions of miles, 

 and the perihelion 24 millions. Thus, when in aphe- 

 lion, the body is close to the orbit of the earth, and 

 this occurring periodically, when the earth is at 4 T the 

 same time in that part of its orbit, nebulous particles 

 are attracted towards it by its gravity, and then, 

 entering the atmosphere, are consumed in it by their 

 concurrent velocities, causing the appearance of a 

 meteoric shower. The parent body is inferred to be 

 nebular, because, though the meteors fall towards 

 the earth with prodigious velocity, few, if any, ap- 

 pear to have reached the surface. They were 



stopped by the resistance of the air and dissipated in it, whereas, if they had possessed 

 any considerable quantity of matter, the momentum would have been sufficient to 

 have brought them down in some instances to the earth. Arago has suggested a similar 

 theory, that of a stream or group of innumerable bodies, comparatively small, but of 

 various dimensions, sweeping round the solar focus in an orbit which periodically cuts that 

 of the earth. These two theories are in substance the Chladnian hypothesis, first started 

 to explain the observed actual descent of aerolites. Though great obscurity rests upon 

 the subject, the fact may be deemed certain that independently of the great planets and 

 satellites of the system, there are vast numbers of bodies circling round the sun, both 



