EXPENDITURE AND SUPPLY. 21 



equivalent to heat, which exists in virtue of the rapid 

 motion of these little bodies. It is true that we only see 

 meteors at that supreme moment of their dissolution when 

 they dash into our atmosphere. It is, however, impossible 

 to doubt that, besides the meteoric streams with which we 

 are acquainted, there must be many shoals of meteors 

 which never collide with our earth. The other great 

 globes in our system must, like our globe, absorb multi- 

 tudes of meteors which they chance to encounter in their 

 roamings. The numbers of meteors gathered by a globe 

 will be doubtless greater the larger and more massive the 

 globe is, and this for a double reason. In the first place, 

 the dimensions of the atmospheric net which the globe 

 extends to entrap the meteors will, when other things are 

 equal, increase with the size of the globe. But there is also 

 another reason the more massive the globe the more vehe- 

 ment will be its power of attraction, and the greater will be 

 the number of the meteors that are drawn into destruction 

 in its atmosphere. Of course this reasoning applies in a 

 special degree to the sun. We shall probably be correct 

 in the assertion that for every meteor that descends upon 

 this earth, thousands, if not millions of meteors will plunge 

 into the sun. As these objects pierce their way through 

 the sun's atmosphere light and heat will of course be 

 evolved. It has been conjectured that the friction of the 

 meteors which are incessantly rushing into the sun may 

 produce light and heat in sufficient quantity to aid in the 

 maintenance of the sun's ordinary expenditure by radia- 

 tion. It has been even supposed that the quantity of 

 energy thus generated may supply all that is wanted to 

 explain the extraordinary circumstance that from age to 



