376 . The November Meteors. 



regarded as microscopic planetoids, one night has consumed 

 — burnt up — many thousand little worlds, and their remains 

 are diffused in our atmosphere, or scattered unnoticeably on 

 our earth. To meet and burn up a shower of these little 

 bodies and convert them into most glorious fireworks is a 

 pleasant incident in the journey of our earth-ball through 

 celestial space, and perhaps the most enthusiastic advocate of 

 the habitability of the planetary worlds does not consider that 

 we have brought to a fiery ending the lives of microscopic 

 populations on these tiny globes. 



These shooting- stars, periodically met with in swarms, 

 appear to be circling round the sun like larger planets, and it 

 happens at recurring intervals that their orbit crosses ours 

 when we are near enough to attract them into our atmosphere, 

 which they enter with velocities of thirty or forty miles a 

 second, and get burnt up through the heat which the friction 

 engenders. A cannon-ball moves at about 1600 feet per 

 second at its greatest velocity, and when we consider how 

 insignificant this motion is when compared with thirty miles a 

 second, we may imagine the intensity of the heat developed by 

 friction even against the particles of highly attenuated air. 



From the small size of the bodies of the shooting-stars 

 their bombardment of our earth is unable to do any harm 

 or produce any visible effect on its surface, but if there 

 be swarms of bodies as big as the great meteoric stones, and 

 likely to get in our way, future astronomers may not find 

 watching a meteor shower so agreeable an affair as those of 

 this generation found their labours on the famous November 

 night in 1866. 



We may add an interesting observation of the Rev. E. L. 

 Berthon of Romsey, who says — " One most brilliant, rose 

 coloured globe, which passed through Gemini below Pollux, 

 left a long train of blue light, which continued like a comet 

 16° long for three minutes, and then gathering itself gradually 

 into a wisp, remained in sight for six minutes and twenty 

 seconds." Between one and two o'clock Mr. B. Scott, 

 F.R.A.S., saw from Weybridge two meteors in the west, 

 which he describes in the Morning Star as " revolving, like 

 partners hand in hand in a country dance, round each other, 

 describing spirals of light." 



Papers already published in the Intellectual Oesekvee will supply much 

 information for which we have been asked, and we shall resume the subject 

 in our next number, supplying full answers to inquiries for popular 

 expositions. A general account of Falling Stars and Meteorites, by Pro- 

 fessor Ansted, will be found in vol. iv., p. 157. In vol. i., p. 217, is a paper 

 by Mr. A. S. Herschel, on the Observed Heights of Meteors, illustrated by a 

 diagram. In vol. hi., p. 31, is a translation from M. Quetelet's Physique du Globe, 

 containing much valuable information on shooting stars, with a diagram, showing the 



