CHAPTER XYIL 



SHOWERS OF SHOOTING STARS. 



I HAVE thought it convenient to illustrate the leading 

 phenomena of meteors by reference to some of the 

 more imposing of these bodies, but it must not be sup- 

 posed that the smaller meteors, and even the tiniest of 

 shooting stars, are unworthy of our close attention. In- 

 deed, the smaller shooting stars, by their greater fre- 

 quency, have taught us much more about meteors than 

 we could have ever learned from the great fire-balls. 

 Even regarded from the merely spectacular point of view, 

 the splendours of the latter are sometimes eclipsed by 

 the gorgeous showers of comparatively small meteors, to 

 which we shall presently have to refer. 



We have spoken of dazzling fire-balls which generate 

 for a brief moment a light which eye-witnesses, with 

 possibly a pardonable exaggeration, have ventured to 

 compare with the beams of the sun himself. Other 

 meteors are described as being as bright as the full moon. 

 Descending still lower in the scale of splendour, we read 

 of fire-balls as bright as Venus or Jupiter, as bright as 

 Sirius, or as a star of the first magnitude. With each stej> 



