68 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



one by one they crash through it either to fall on the ground or to 

 be annihilated by friction before reaching it. 



Professor Schiaparelli, an Italian authority on these questions, 

 regards meteoroids as original inmates or portions of one of what he 

 styles star drifts, and of whose existence decided proofs are given by 

 Proctor, and composing with other stars of the same vast eddy at- 

 tendant bodies accompanying in its journey through space the gen- 

 eral drift or star family of which the sun forms part. On this as- 

 sumption they are bodies from some more distant space than the 

 star family of the sun, wanderers trom more distant star drifts 



The conflagration of a star through contact with meteoroid 

 bodies is not an unknown occurrence. The first on record took 

 place 2,000 years ago, and is described by Hipparchus. It was seen 

 blazing in full daylight. A similar event is recorded in 945, in 

 ,1264 and in 1572, In 1596 Fabricius observed a similar occur- 

 rence, followed by another in 1604. In 1673 another made its 

 appearance, remaining visible for two years, whilst as recently as 

 1848, a similar event was noticed, and a few years ago another ap- 

 peared, which was ably written upon by Proctor in an article of his 

 in ' Belgravia.' At the present time a burning star is apparent in 

 the constellation Auriga, which is being watched with great interest. 

 In 1859 two meteoric masses are recorded as having fallen into the 

 sun and affected the whole frame of the earth. Vivid auroras were 

 seen where they had never before been seen, accompanied by elec- 

 tro-magnetic disturbances all over the world. In many parts the 

 telegraph lines refused to work, signal men received severe shocks, 

 and at Boston and elsewhere, a flame of fire followed the pen of 

 Baios' telegraph. This was the effect of two comparatively small 

 meteors. What would be the effect of a comet, bearing in its flight 

 many millions of these, falhng into the sun, can hardly be under- 

 stood. It would be only temporary, but no student of science would 

 be left to record it. Proctor, however, reassures us by saying that 

 all but one of the known star conflagrations have occurred in the 

 zone of the Milky Way, and that one, in a region connected with 

 the Milky Way by a stream of stars; and if among the comets in 

 attendance on our sun there is one whose orbit intersects the sun's 

 globe, it must already have struck it long before the era of man. 



An interesting question has recently been put forward by the 

 ' Lancet,' the well-known Enghsh medical pubhcation, respecting 



