1838.] M. Wartmann on (he Meteoric Shoivers of Nov. 1835. 171 



neighbourhood, in France and elsewhere ; and perhaps the magnificent 

 spectacle which the sky presented at Geneva in the night of the 12th 

 to the 13th of November, 1832, of which Professor Gautier gave an 

 account in the fifty-first volume of the Bibliotheque Universelle, might 

 again have been exhibited before our eyes. 



The result, then, of our observations is, that the shooting stars 

 circulate in a much more elevated region of the sky than that 

 attained by the clouds, and that meteors of this kind rarely fall to 

 the surface of the earth, if they ever do. This opinion acquires so much 

 more probability, as no one till now, at least so far as I know, has been 

 able to obtain an authentic specimen of this mysterious substance, 



A learned astronomer communicated to the Academy of Sciences of 

 Paris, in the session of the 5th of this month (December 1836) a curi- 

 ous and very interesting memoir, which appears to suggest that the 

 luminous nebulosity by which the sun appears to be surrounded in the 

 direction of its equator, a nebulosity which is projected far into space, 

 assuming the form of a cone, and which has been known for two cen- 

 turies by the name of the zodiacal light, might probably be the source 

 of the myriads of shooting stars of the 13th of November, the earth at 

 this epoch passing in the neighbourhood of the summit of this cone. 

 Nevertheless, the author of the memoir, M. Biot, after having consider- 

 ed the subject under different views and discussed it scientifically, ends 

 by declaring that he neither asserts nor rejects this identity*. 



Some writers think that the origin of the shooting stars which com- 

 pose the periodical phsenomenon of the I3th of November, might also 

 be ascribed to a great planet which may formerly have been broken 

 into a multitude of fragments, which would continue to circulate one 

 after the other in an orbit whose position is such that the earth ap- 

 proaches annually very near to it on the 13th of November. These 

 fragments, endowed with a great velocity of projection, would enter 

 our atmosphere at this period, cross it rapidly, and, by the friction 

 caused by the resistance of the air, would grow so hot there as to be- 

 come incandescent and to send forth a bright light until the moment of 

 their quitting it. 



This hypothesis, very ingenious as it may appear, is not free from 

 objection. Already a celebrated philosopher, whose opinion is of 

 great weight, has not hesitated to say that it would be premature to at- 

 tempt ascending to the physical cause of these curious appearances 



* Comptes Eendus del' Jcad. de Paris, No. 23, December I836, vol. iii. p. 66j. 



