208 IN STARRY REALMS. 



friction could deprive me of a speed of twenty miles a 

 second. That heat not merely warmed me, but I rapidly 

 became red-hot, white-hot, then I melted, even though 

 composed of materials of a most refractory kind. Still 

 friction had much more to do, and it actually drove me 

 oft into vapour, and I vanished. You, standing on your 

 earth many miles below, never saw me never could 

 have seen me until this supreme moment, when, glow- 

 ing with an instantaneous fervour, I for a brief second 

 became visible. You shouted, ' Oh ! there is a shooting 

 star.' 



"Nature knows no annihilation, and though I had 

 been driven off into vapour and the trial by fire had 

 scattered and dispersed me, yet in the lofty heights of 

 the atmosphere those vapours cooled and condensed. 

 They did not, they never could again reunite and repro- 

 duce my pristine structure. Here and there in wide 

 diffusion I repassed from the vaporous to the solid form, 

 and in this state I wore the appearance of a streak of 

 minute granules distributed all along the highway I had 

 followed. These granules gradually subsided through 

 the air to the earth. On Alpine snows, far removed from 

 the haunts of men and from the contamination of chim- 

 neys, minute particles have been gathered, many of which 

 have unquestionably been derived from the scattered 

 remains of shooting stars. Into the sea similar particles 

 are for ever falling, and they have been subsequently 

 dredged up from profound depths, having subsided 

 through an ocean of water after sinking through an ocean 

 of air. 



" The motes by which a sunbeam through a chink in a 



