the heavens equal to three diameters of the moon
through which one or more of these meteors was
not constantly passing; all of them leaving a
luminous trail which endured for seven or eight
seconds. They were also seen at Weimar; and
a Mr. Ellicot, who on that night was at sea
between Cape Florida and the West India Islands,
says: " The whole heavens appeared as if
illuminated with sky-rockets, which disappeared only
by the light of the sun after daybreak. The
meteors, which at one time appeared as numerous
as the stars, flew in all possible directions, except
from the earth" (Humboldt says their direction
was very regular from north to south), "and
some of them descended perpendicularly over the
vessel we were in, so that I was in constant
expectation of their falling on us." Exhibitions
of this kind have been frequent before and since.
One of these was so brilliant by reason of the
immense number of these glowing meteors which
constantly filled the air, that the people of Quito,
and those who dwelt in the surrounding country,
imagined the volcanic mountain of Cayambaro
to be on fire, and were greatly terrified. Similar
falls were seen in Canada, and a person writing
from the North Sea in 1818, related that the
atmosphere surrounding them looked like an
ocean on fire. Equally magnificent displays of
the same kind are recorded which have been
visible from a large portion of the earth's surface.
But by far the grandest exhibition of the kind
on record, was observed in America. Showers of
fiery meteors had been observed to fall on a
certain day in November in two succeeding years,
and in the following year, on the same day of the
month, there was a repetition of the phenomenon
on a scale which has never been witnessed before
or since. " I was," says a South Carolina planter,
"suddenly awakened by the most distressing
cries that ever fell on my ears. Shrieks of horror,
and cries for mercy, I could hear from most of
the negroes on three plantations, amounting in
all to about six or eight hundred. While
earnestly listening for the cause, I heard a faint
voice near the door calling my name. I arose,
and, taking my sword, stood at the door. At
this moment I heard the same voice still beseeching
me to rise, and saying, ' O, my God, the world
is on fire!' I then opened the door, and it is
difficult to say which excited me most— the
awfulness of the scene, or the distressed cries of
the negroes. Upwards of one hundred lay prostrate
on the ground— some speechless, and some
with the bitterest cries, but with their hands
raised, imploring God to save the world and
them. The scene was truly awful; for never
did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell
towards the earth; east, west, north, and south,
it was the same." All these meteors seemed to
emerge from a particular part of the heavens,
near a brilliant globe of fire, which remained
visible during the entire display: similar globes,
many of them of immense magnitude, but
travelling with great velocity, were likewise
seen, one in particular, which is described as
having an apparent diameter exceeding that of
the moon at the full.

Many of these meteors left long trains of
various coloured light behind them, which in
some cases did not disappear for several minutes.
These larger bodies, no doubt, passed through
the earth's atmosphere, or they would not have
become luminous; but it would seem that their
distance from the earth was so great that,
combined with the velocity with which they moved
hi their orbit, the attraction of our planet was
insufficient to draw them to its surface; while,
as regards the lesser bodies, the intensity of the
heat generated in them by the rapidity with
which they traversed our atmosphere reduced
them to ashes, and they only reached us in the
form of dust, as in the instance related by Père
la Feuillée, who says that a shower of sand fell
on the Atlantic for fifteen hours; and others
might be mentioned of a like kind, in addition to
those recorded by Siegesbaer and Geoffroy le
Cadet, the former of whom tells us that a shower
of powdered sulphur fell at Brunswick in 1721,
and the latter that a shower of fiery particles fell
at Quesnoy on the 4th of January, 1717. Some of
the aërolites which have been seen to pass through
the higher regions of our atmosphere, have been
of such enormous magnitude, that, if they had
descended upon the earth in an unbroken state,
they must have caused great local damage, even
if their volume were insufficient to affect the inclination
of the axis of the earth. There was
one, for instance, supposed to have been at least
five hundred thousand tons in weight, which
passed within twenty-five miles of us; and others
have been seen to pass us at a higher elevation,
immensely exceeding this in dimensions.
Probably it was a meteor of this kind which the
Arab historians describe as having fallen in India
just previous to the visitation of the frightful
epidemic spoken of as the Black Death, which
went far towards depopulating the world. Indeed,
they regarded the fall of this meteor as
giving rise to the pestilence; for they said it
either generated or was accompanied by a foul
vapour, which poisoned the air for miles round,
and killed innumerable persons.

It would seem that the Creator of the universe
has provided a shield for the protection of his
creatures from evils which are not inevitable
results of their own wickedness or folly. We do
not remember any instance on record in which
an explosion did not take place before the
aërolite reached the earth, by which it was
blown harmless to pieces; some of the fragments
reaching the earth at different points; others, and
these probably the larger portions, continuing
their revolutions through space. An extraordinary
instance of a series of such explosions was
observed in France, which was subsequently made
the subject of an inquiry by a commission under
the direction of M. Biot. The explosions were
preceded by the appearance of a huge ball of fire
seen over nearly the whole of Normandy. Then,
for five or six minutes, they followed each other