Daily camera., 1898-11-28
SHOOTING STARSLAND
MANY Tons of Them Reach the
Earth Every Day.
Such Ii the Theory OF an Astronom
tcal lAuthority-Intere Par
uculars of a Recent
Lecture.

Sir Robert Ball, president of the
Royal Astr onomical society, delivered
in the Birkkeck institute recently the
first of the lectures arranged for the
present season. His subject was "The
Lances of Heaven" telling about the
great showers of shooting stars that
may be expected in Novem Der, 1898, OF
1899. For period of thousand years
great showers of stars had REQUIRED
every 33 years with more or less regu'
larity The fist that took place in this
country was On November 13, 1888. AL
ordinary shoe ting star, even though II
traced out a brilliant streak across the
star-spangled vaults. was by no mean.
4 large object. A meteor was not sc
big as the moon. The shooting staI
was less than a mountain or a hill;
it was even smaller than cottage; not
often were The shooting stars so heavy
as a turnip, or even as potato; and
many a bri cht shooting staI was nc
larger than an ordinary bean: they
were frequently not so large as a pea
Among the innumarable myriads OF
shooting stars many were. in truth,
neither larger nor heavier than the
grains of =And on The seashore. For
thousands GE years--he believed fol-
tens or hund eds of thousands of years
the little meteor haU been hurrving
through spac" with that extraordinary
speed which utterly transcribed any
velocity that could be produced on
earth The earth was bombarded by
shooting stars, day and night. year in
and year out. by hundreds of thousands
Of them, which, though small, possessed
extraordinary. power for doing mis-
chief. If the meteors were not arrested
in their frenzied fight and rendered
perfectly harmless he could not tell
what the result would be. They were
often exactly in the line of fire of the
great November shower. and the very
fury with which these lances of heaven
tried to get a. us was the source of our
salvation. The speed of their flight
was so preposterous that the shooting
star became transformed into a streak
IF harmless and beautiful vapor. On
the most moderate computations scores
Of tons of meteoric ma tier were added
each day to the previous mass of the
earth. Since the queen came to the
throne the earth had acquired not less
than half million tons of additional
matter, which had been gathering from
the depths of space. No one could tell
where this matter was not to be found.
On lofty Al pine SUBMITS, amid the eter-
nal SHOWS, whose purity had never been
sullied by smoke from furnaces, minute
particles were found, bearing evidence
of having l,een fused by intense heat.
Such particles were the poor residues
IF glorious shooting stars which had
originated in comets. Amid the ooze
that came up from the bottom of the
Atlantic were many little particles
which had merely exchanged their po
sition from the depths of space to the
depths of ocean. For they We're the
spoils of the shooting stars which had
dropped into the sea. The notes which
Aoated so beautiful iy in the sunbeam
frequently comprised heavenly contri-
buttons. Tho burrows turned over by
the plow of the hu ohandman contained
no insignificant proportion of materials
which in tha lapse of illimitable ages
Of geological time had been gathered in
from the tails of mighty comets. Grains
of corn owed omething to the gentle
rain of meteoric matter. as well as to
the gentle rains of more familiar de.
Scription. The loaf as it came to the
table contaired within it particles
which had voyaged for uncounted thou
sands of centuries Of time through il
limitable millions OF space. Thus to
provide the actual material Of our
bodily frame the remotest realms of
space had been laid under contribution.
The life of everyone present was at
that moment in intimate association
with. particles that had been brought
thither by shooting stars. These won
lers of the shooting stars did but lead
them to think of those fine words of
Rusllin: ''It is but the outer hem Of
Gods great mantle our poor stars do
rem u london Standard