62 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



MESSENGERS FROM THE SKIES. 



Read before the Hamilton Association, February 2jth, i8g2. 

 BY H. B. SMALL. 



There is an old Norse legend, still retained in parts of Europe, 

 that when a child is born, the Goddess' of Destiny spins a thread 

 and hangs a star thereon, which continues to shine whilst life lasts, 

 but at the approach ot death the thread of destiny breaks, and the 

 stars fall headlong to the earth, and is extinguished. To this legend 

 may be traced the not uncommon remark amongst the country folk 

 of the Mother country at the present day when they see a fallen star, 

 that " A life is going out.'' 



All sorts of superstitions have been attached to meteors in by- 

 gone days, and they have been regarded as omens of some great 

 event or some dire calamity. We find in the Scriptures, associated 

 with the calamities that were to befall Jerusalem, the expression, 

 " The stars shall fall from heaven," and in Revelations, amidst all 

 the fearful events described, are "The stars of heaven fell upon 

 the earth," and " There fell a great star from heaven, burning, as 

 it were a lamp." 



In an old Latin chronicle^ by Baldric, occurs the following 

 passage, quoted in the Journal of the French Academy of Science, 

 as adding testimony to the superstition regarding them. Baldric 

 says, "Already, before the Council of Claremount, the stars had an- 

 nounced the progress of Christianity, for innumerable eyes in France 

 saw them fall from Heaven, as thick as hail, on the 25th of April, 

 1095.'' 



Ignorance is always the parent of superstition, and we have all 

 probably read of the extreme terror the great November meteor 

 shower of 1833 created amongst the Negroes of the South, who were 

 convinced that it heralded the end of the world. 



Virgil alluded to meteors as indicating storm, the passage trans- 

 lated by Dryden being as lollows : — 



