261 
and even the first expression of Professor W. Thomson’s also, where 
the sun is fed by lumps of meteoric matter, there is some difficulty 
in explaining why the occurrence of luminous meteors in the sun is 
not frequently observed, if remarkably visible in one instance ; while, 
according to the subsequent modification of the latter’s view, the 
generality of meteors must be distilled away into impalpable clouds of 
finely-divided meteoric matter some time before they actually reach the 
sun ; and neither gentleman had expected that an actual impact would 
ever be seen by mortal eye. 
These objections, however, will be at once, to a great extent, re- 
lieved by the very fair assumption of as superior a mass to the 
September 1st meteor, over the generality of those which fall to the 
sun, in any and every manner, as men have already recorded of 
those which have actually fallen to, or have been seen very near, 
the earth ; for while the majority (see the museums of Vienna, St 
Petersburg, and London) measure only a few inches, with occa- 
sional masses of 2 and 3 feet, there was one unusually well observed 
by many able spectators in Scotland, England, and France, on the 
18th August 1783, which was estimated to be more than half a 
mile in length. 
It may indeed be argued that, with this superior size of body, 
the decrease of the meteor’s radius-vector in its orbit would have 
been slower than with smaller lumps revolving in the denser parts 
of the ethereal medium in the sun’s immediate neighbourhood (see 
“ Edinburgh Astronomical Observations,” vol. xi. p. 266); and it 
would therefore have been exposed so much longer to the fiery heat 
of that region as to be distilled away, equally with the smaller ones, 
before actually touching the grosser parts of the solar atmosphere. 
This argument, even carried to the extreme, does but remove the 
probability of the phenomenon of September 1st from being a me- 
teor of the W. Thomson character, circulating around the sun, to 
one of Waterston’s, failing to the sun from distant space ; and 
while Professor W. Thomson has most satisfactorily demonstrated 
that, whatever may be the real character of the greater part of the 
solar light and heat, some of it must be due to meteoric action, so, 
while we freely concede to him that the majority of meteoric matter 
falling to the sun is of the planetary or satellite character, we are 
still entitled, according to his own reasoning on p. 67 of “ Transac- 
tions of Royal Society of Edinburgh,” vol. xxi. part i., as well as 
