Samuel G. Goodrich

SHOOTING STARS.

There are few of you who have not seen falling or shooting stars, as they are called. Perhaps some of you have loved to walk out when the stars have been shining brightly in the blue sky overhead, to watch for these shy wanderers that seem to come from no where, just to draw a line of silver light across the heavens, and then disappear. When I was a little child, I used to think that each appearance of this kind was the destruction of one of the countless worlds that surround us, and possibly the same fancy may, at some time or other, have occurred to you.

If you have taken delight in watching for them, you have many a time been disappointed, because they would not show themselves more frequently. It is, for the most part, only now and then that you can catch sight of one; but there have been some occasions on which they have appeared in immense numbers.

The most astonishing multitude of them on record, appeared in the year 1833, in the night of the 13th of November, and was seen over nearly the whole of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to Baffin's Bay. They came from all quarters of the Heavens, and are said at one time to have been half as thick as the flakes in a heavy fall of snow. It was calculated, on the most moderate grounds, that 36,000 must have appeared every hour for seven hours successively.

Previously, in the year 1799, also on the 13th of November, a similar phenomenon was observed by Humboldt, the celebrated traveller, by some Moravian Missionaries in Greenland, and by many persons in Germany.

In the year 1822, on the same day of the same month, almost as great a number were seen in several parts of Europe and Asia.

In the year 1831, a French Officer states, that on the 13th of November, while off the coast of Spain, he saw on an average more than two a minute during several hours of the night.

Similar observations were made in the year 1835, in some parts of France; and from several other instances, there seems to be good reason for believing that there are more falling stars about the middle of November, than during any other part of the year.

There have been a great many vague and silly notions devised to account for these remarkable phenomena, and some that are not unreasonable, though none perhaps quite satisfactory. It has been considered that they were clouds of hydrogen gas, suddenly ignited by electricity, within the range of our own atmosphere, and indeed only a very few miles above the earth. Recent investigations have, however, rendered it most probable that they are at very considerable elevations, often as much as 500 miles above us.

But supposing the circumstance of great multitudes of them appearing just at one particular period of the year, to be a fact, a new light is thrown upon their origin which must then be considered as decidedly of an astronomical character. The theory which has been proposed, is this:—that immense quantities of fragments of matter revolve in regular orbits in our solar system in various planes, and that on the 13th of November the earth passes near the orbit in which the greatest number of such fragments move. Whether they are matter in a gaseous state, or approaching it, or quite solid; or whether they are constantly illuminated, or are only rendered luminous by their relation to other bodies, such as reflection, or meeting with electric fluid, and so becoming ignited, are questions which must remain unanswered. There may be a slight evidence in favour of the notion of their light not being permanent in themselves, from the fact of a French naturalist having observed on the 17th of June in 1777, a very large number of small black spots pass over the sun's disc. If these spots were really bodies, which under other circumstances would have been falling stars, it should not be forgotten that the earth in June is nearly in the opposite part of its orbit to that which it passes over in November.

Well, after all, this is a very doubtful subject, and we may possibly be very much out in our notions; but it is always worth while to see which is the best of two theories, though there may be ever so little to choose between them. We should make the best of what knowledge we have, and never lazily satisfy ourselves by saying—"nobody can tell which is true," which is almost as bad as being too obstinate and dogmatical. For even if we adopt a conclusion which is wrong, we shall be more ready to receive the truth when our knowledge may be increased, than if we have no conclusion at all. One of the wisest men who ever lived, said—"Truth comes more easily out of positive error than out of confusion."

You who have been interested with what I have told you respecting shooting stars, should compare with it what I shall tell you in my next chapter.