that one of them had changed its place. He watched its motion for two months, during all which time it continued its progress, which was in the contrary direction to the order of the signs of the zodiac. It remains to be known, whether this, too, is a planet to be hereafter added to our histories. Laplace believes the attractive power of the sun to fill a sphere, of which from the centre to the circumference is a distance of a hundred millions of times greater than the distance of the sun from the earth. Remember that this latter distance is ninety-five millions of miles; making, of the whole, ninety-five hundred millions of miles. But Uranus itself is only nineteen times more distant from the sun than even our distant earth; while the solar attraction continues beyond Uranus itself eighty-one times the distance of the earth! Here is ample room, then, both within and without the orbit of Uranus, for the existence of members of the Solar System with which we are still entirely unacquainted! There may be both small bodies and large, belonging to the Solar System, never yet hitherto discovered from the earth, and which must continue undiscovered from it for ever! But M. Arago has fancied the discovery of new millions of at least small bodies. I have told you of that gentleman's estimate of the comets of our system at a number exceeding seven millions, and now I am to add, that he believes we have some countless millions of small planetary bodies; primary but minute. planets, moving, in throngs, in a single orbit which surrounds the sun! The belief of M. Arago arises out of some late observations of an annual appearance of shooting or falling stars, now spoken of as the annual appearance of the "November Asteroïds." Now of this I am going to tell you more. CHAP. LIV. MORE ABOUT SHOOTING OR FALLING STARS. ABOUT STARJELLY, OR STAR-SHOT, OR NOSTOC. ABOUT FIRE-BALLS AND AEROLITES. You have often seen shooting or falling stars. Perhaps you have seen sky-rockets also. If you have, you may have also found some small resemblance between the two; for, at least, the shooting or falling stars, after running, for an instant, through the sky, appear to burst in the air, and to disperse themselves in shining sparks, which soon fade and vanish, or become extinct. Perhaps you have even run to the spot where you thought the extinguished sparks must have fallen, in order to find their substance; as, perhaps, you have also run after rocket-sticks, toward the spots where they have seemed to fall. If you have done none of these things, at least others have done so, both before and since you were born! But, though we know the appearance of these shooting or falling stars, what, in reality, are they; and of what nature is this substance which it has been supposed possible to find and pick up, after it has fallen, and become dark and cold? These have long been subjects of different opinions, though never, till now, of the opinions lately advanced. Shooting or falling stars have generally been held as no stars at all, but only meteors; or bodies which, belonging to the atmosphere of the earth, should be described in my Tales about Clouds, Rain, Snow, and all other Meteors, and not among these Tales about the Sun, Moon, and Stars. I must mention them again, and more at length, in those other Tales; but as, at present, some suspect them to be really stars, or at least planetary bodies of our system, I am obliged to speak of them in the very Tales which you are reading. Shooting or falling stars have been considered fiery meteors. Fiery meteors are exhalations from the earth, and move only in our atmosphere, and not in the great heavenly space. They are always seen, and sometimes heard also, to explode; and the explosion is often known to be followed by the fall of meteoric stones: the whole, as to the manner, (though upon a scale so immeasurably larger,) like the explosion of a sky-rocket, and the fall of its sparks, and paper, and stick. But I must add no more to the history of meteoric stones. Fiery meteors of large sizes are called fireballs, but these are of rare appearance. Those comparatively small are frequent, and are called falling or shooting stars; and while, from the explosions of some at least of the former, we derive the earthy and metallic substances at |