298 NINETEENTH CENTURY. rr. in. 



thousands of fragments, some of which weighed as much as 

 1 7 J lbs. This created so much astonishment that the French 

 Government sent M. Biot, a celebrated French chemist, to ex- 

 amine into the matter, and he reported that there could be no 

 doubt that a shower of hot stones had fallen upon the earth. 



From this time more interest was taken in meteors and 

 meteoric stones. People had remarked for a long time that 

 shooting-stars were more abundant from the 9th to the nth 

 of August than at other times, and more lately it was also 

 noticed that a shower of the same kind happens about the 

 T3th of November. Astronomers began, therefore, to think 

 that these meteors must move in regular orbits, crossing 

 the orbit of our earth in certain places, so that we pass 

 through them. There were also reasons for thinking that 

 the November meteors travelled in an enormous ellipse, 

 passing at one end even outside the planet Uranus. 



It was not, however, till thirteen years ago that anything 

 was really known. In the year 1862 an Italian astronomer 

 named Schiaparelli made a very remarkable suggestion. He 

 noticed that a comet which was seen in that year crossed the 

 earth's path just at the point where we are always in the 

 middle of the meteor-shower on August 10, and it occurred 

 to him whether it might not be possible that the August 

 meteors were travelling in the same orbit as the comet. His 

 guess turned out perfectly right, and by a calculation which 

 we cannot follow here he proved that the comet and the August 

 meteors travel along precisely the same path in the shape of a 

 long ellipse passing at one end outside the planet Neptune, 

 the most distant of the known planets. This was the first 

 time that the orbit of any set of meteors had been traced 

 out. 



The next was that of the November meteors, which was 



