72 History of Nature. [BooK II. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

 The extraordinary Shooting of Stars in the Sky. 



STARS are also seen to shoot hither and thither, but 

 never to any purpose : for, from the same Quarter where 

 they appear, there rise terrible Winds, and after them Tem- 

 pests both by Sea and Land. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

 Of the Stars called Castor and Pollux 1 . 



I HAVE seen myself, in the Camp, from the Sentinels in 

 the Night-watch, the Resemblance of Lightning to fix on the 

 Spears set before the Rampart. They settle also upon the 

 Yards, and other Parts of the Ship, at Sea : making a Kind 

 of vocal Sound, and shifting their Places as Birds do which 

 fly from Bough to Bough. They are dangerous when they 

 come singly, for they sink those Ships on which they alight ; 



1 Luminous meteors are mostly seen at night ; since daylight is too 

 powerful to allow them to be seen. They have not been studied as the 

 subject deserves ; and hence the futility of the explanations generally 

 given to their causes. There is little doubt, that they differ greatly in 

 nature. Some are undoubtedly electric; as may be judged from their 

 sudden explosion, sometimes with signs of great violence. The appear- 

 ances termed Castor and Pollux, and among modern sailors Corbisant, or 

 Corpo Santo, is exceedingly rare on land, and in the British seas ; but 

 common in warmer latitudes than Britain. Light of, perhaps, the same 

 nature, is sometimes seen on the ears of animals, as the horse, when tra- 

 velling in stormy weather. Pliny speaks of being himself an eye-witness 

 to the settling of meteors on the military spears ; and there is a record of 

 a similar appearance in the sixth volume (p. 38) of Hearne's edition of 

 Leland's Itinerary: "In the yere of our Lord 1098, Corborant, admiral 

 to the Soudan of Perce, was faught with at Antioche, and discumfited by 

 the Christianes. The night cumming on yn the chace of this bataile, and 

 waxing dark, the Christianes beying 4 miles from Antioche, God willing 

 the saufte of the Christianes, shewid a white starre or molette of fy ve 

 pointes on the Christen host, which to every manne's sighte did lighte and 

 arrest upon the standard of Alboy the 3rd, there shining excessively." 

 Wern. Club. 



