XVi President's Address 
had they been clear it is doubtful if we should have 
seen anything very unusual, as I have since learned that 
this part of the globe must have passed the portion of 
space occupied by the node of these bodies before 
their arrival there. It was, therefore, reserved for the 
western world to witness the stupendous spectacle presented 
on this occasion. 
The origin of meteors, or falling stars, has for a long 
period been a subject of conjecture and speculation, and 
I have no doubt many of you are acquainted with the 
various theories that have been entertained on this point at 
one time and another. The recurrence of unusual numbers 
of meteors, or meteoric storms, as they are called, at certain 
nearly equal periods, however, has been the means of 
directing the attention of many great investigators to 
the subject. It was formerly thought—and this not so very 
“many years ago—that the interplanetary spaces were occu- 
pied only by that mysterious medium called etheng the 
discovery, one by one, of the planetoids, now num ering 
ninety, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, however, led 
to the conjecture years ago that these spaces may yet 
be tenanted by masses of matter too minute to reflect 
sufficient light to be visible by the most penetrating tele- 
scopes yet made. Subsequently, the belief that meteors 
were minute masses of planetary matter became pretty 
general among astronomers. The occurrence of a meteoric 
shower in 1833, which is the last that occurred before 
the November one, induced Oldsted, who compared the 
account of a similar phenomenon seen by Humboldt and 
Bonplan in 1799, to adopt the theory—-which this last 
shower so fully confirms—that these meteoric storms are 
due to the passages of the earth through a mass of these 
atoms of matter, which appear to be congregated into aring, 
that intersects the earth’s orbit. We can scarcely now 
