124 RESEARCHES CONCERNING THE PERIODICAL 



bleness of individual light, consists all our knowledge of what remoteness to as- 

 sign the telescopic fixed stars, and still farther on, the crowded hosts of the 

 milky way, upon the scale of distance of which the nearest fixed star is the 

 unit. The testimony is even far stronger in the case of the telescopic meteors ; 

 for the proportionate minuteness of their actual unmagnified velocity confirms, 

 in the highest degree, what seems otherwise sufficiently evident, that we must 

 allow them to have been many times farther off than those of ordinary occur- 

 rence. Why may we not gage the strata of meteors or meteoric matter, at the 

 time of an expected shower, with that kind and degree of certainty which at- 

 tends Sir William Herschel's gages of our sidereal system and milky way? 



" Unless there is reason for a great difference between the absolute velocities 

 of the more distant and the nearer of these bodies, the telescopic meteors which 

 were seen on the above evenings could not have been much less than eighty 

 times as far above the earth as those seen by the naked eye, which (according 

 to the observations of Brandes and Benzenberg) probably darted most thickly 

 at a height of fifty or sixty miles. This latter quantity, multiplied by eighty, 

 or the magnifying power of the telescope, indicates a probable elevation of at 

 least four thousand miles. At this vast height, if the atmosphere exist at aU, 

 it must be in a state inconceivably rare, rivalling the supposed resisting me- 

 dium in its tenuity. It will at once be seen that telescopic observations, of the 

 nature of those made with the fourteen feet reflector, have a peculiar bearing 

 on the cause of the ignition of meteors, and, perhaps, on inquiries connected 

 with the extent of the earth's atmosphere, and with the resisting medium. If 

 carried out with energy, many of the misty theories concerning the nature and 

 constitution of meteors will probably melt away, and we may have at least the 

 comfort of compelling speculation to the effort of reinvention. A nebulous or 

 gaseous constitution seems to be indicated by the observations, as far as they 

 have a bearing on this point. 



" I have seen (I believe in the London Times) a communication from Sir 

 James South, the celebrated English astronomer, in which, after expressing 

 great gratification at the recurrence of the annual shower on this same occa- 

 sion, he remarks that he endeavoured to bring a hand telescope to bear upon 

 the brightest of these objects, as they successively flashed, but without success, 

 although ' a tolerably quick shot' in this kind of observation. This is the only 

 attempt at telescopic examination of which I am aware." 



