SHOWERS OF SHOOTING STARS. 235 



repetition of the phenomenon to-morrow as well as on the 

 following mornings. It was on similar grounds that we 

 were able to predict the occurrence of that great No- 

 vember shower. 



Just thirty-three years previously, in the year 1833, a 

 splendid shower of shooting stars had been witnessed in 

 the same month of November and on the same day of the 

 month. That two great showers should both have occurred, 

 at the same epoch of the year, after an interval of thirty- 

 three years, was in itself a circumstance not a little 

 remarkable. But this might have been regarded as merely 

 a coincidence, if we had only been acquainted with these 

 two showers, and if we did not know their true relations. 

 Researches into history have, however, brought to light 

 the interesting fact that these two showers were not mere 

 isolated events, but that they were only the two latest 

 members of a long and connected series of great November 

 showers of meteors. As we look back through the records 

 of the past we find occasional mention of what can only 

 have been great displays of shooting stars. Within the 

 last century or two such gorgeous phenomena were wit- 

 nessed in an age when scientific knowledge enabled the 

 spectacle to be in some degree appreciated, but as we peer 

 back still earlier and earlier we find the records of these 

 great events assume a different complexion. Many cen- 

 turies ago the advent of a great shooting-star shower 

 was viewed with terror by a superstitious and ignorant 

 people. Such reords of the event as have been preserved 

 are tinged with such credulity, and so devoid of accurate 

 description, that all we can elicit are the facts that on 

 the dates specified certain celestial phenomena were wit- 



