Sir John Herschel as to the phenomena upon the same night, at the Cape of Good Hope. In neither, have we any showers of stars.

On the night of the 13th of November, 1836, an anxious watch for the reappearance of shooting or falling stars was kept at the Observatories, and in other situations, in several parts of France, Germany, and Holland, and other countries of the continent of Europe; and, even in England, the Ashmolean Society at Oxford engaged the Superintendent of the Police to look carefully for the event. The Superintendent of the Police reported to the Ashmolean Society, that on the night or morning in question, he had seen six of these luminous bodies; and in Holland, Germany, Paris, and various other places in France, numbers, from one to one hundred and seventy, but generally from fifteen to forty, were seen at the same time. Still, the American showers would be wholly wanting, were it not that, in the neighbourhood of Tours,

the country-people declared that during the night they had seen a rain of fire; and that, near Culloy, in the valley of the Rhone, the same authorities are said to have reported, that through a heavy fog they saw lights in the heaven, succeeding each other with such rapidity that they thought them to be flashes of lightning, or else a repetition of the brilliant auroraborealis which they had witnessed on the night of the eighteenth of October preceding. Such, as to its dates, is the latest part of the history of the appearance of the November asteroïds.

CHAP. LVIII.

M. ARAGO'S EXPLANATION.

MR. OLMSTED'S EXPLANATION. M. BIOT'S SUGGESTED EXPLANATION. THE ZODIACAL LIGHT. SUGGESTION THAT SHOOTING-STARS, FIREBALLS, AND THE ZODIACAL LIght itself, ARE ALL ELECTRICAL PHENOMENA, AND THEREFORE METEORS ONLY. OF THE PHENOMENON Of the 13th OF NOVEMBER, 1833, AS SEEN FROM BALTIMORE TO NEW YORK, GREATLY DifFERENT FROM THE ACCOUNTS FROM BOSTON, AND ENTIRELY IN CONTRADICTION TO THE PLANETARY FANCY.

ACCOUNT

To explain the appearances in question, M. Arago offers the doctrine of which I have before spoken; namely, that there exists in the solar system a zone of millions of minute celestial bodies, revolving in groups around the sun; one of which groups, under concurrent circumstances, meets the plane of the ecliptic toward the point which the earth occupies yearly between the 11th and 13th of November.

M. Arago supposes that these minute and multitudinous planets, or what he calls asteroïds,

are dark, and therefore invisible unless they enter our atmosphere, where they take fire, and

consume.

M. Arago proceeds further. He thinks that the group of shooting stars which was seen on the 13th of November, 1834, performs its revolution round the sun in a period of about one hundred and eighty-two days, in an elliptical orbit, whose major axis, or greatest diameter (AB) is one hundred and eighteen millions of

miles; and that at its aphelion distances, (D and E) at which (in November and April) it comes in contact with the atmosphere of the earth, is about ninety-five millions of miles, or nearly the

mean distance of the earth from the sun. The interval of non-appearance, between November 1799, and November 1831, M. Arago attributes to a disturbance of the orbit; and adds, that a similar cause may produce future intervals of a similar non-appearance.

Mr. Olmsted, of North America, has published some comprehensive works upon the American appearance of what he denominates meteoric stars, on the 13th of November, 1833; and supposes it the consequence of the earth's encounter, not with a zone of planets,—but with a great meteoric cloud, which he describes as constantly circulating round the sun.

M. Biot differs, more or less, from both these astronomers, but approves of Mr. Olmsted's latest opinion, concerning the probability of a connection between these stars and the Zodiacal Light. M. Biot wholly inclines to the opinion that they belong to the Zodiacal Light. M. Biot supposes the earth to meet with the Zodi