rs had some connection with each other,
though what that connection is exactly no one knows. Anyway, we can have
no shadow of doubt when we find the comet following a marked path, and
the meteors pursuing the same path in his wake, that the two have some
mysterious affinity. There are other smaller showers besides these of
November and August, and a remarkable fact is known about one of them.
This particular stream was found to be connected with a comet named
Biela's Comet, that had been many times observed, and which returned
about every seven years to the sun. After it had been seen several
times, this astonishing comet split in two and appeared as two comets,
both of which returned at the end of the next seven years. But on the
next two occasions when they were expected they never came at all, and
the third time there came instead a fine display of shooting stars, so
it really seemed as if these meteors must be the fragments of the lost
comet.

It is very curious and interesting to notice that in these star showers
there is no certain record of any large meteorite reaching the earth;
they seem to be made up of such small bodies that they are all
dissipated in vapour as they traverse our air.

CHAPTER X

THE GLITTERING HEAVENS

On a clear moonless night the stars appear uncountable. You see them
twinkling through the leafless trees, and covering all the sky from the
zenith, the highest point above your head, down to the horizon. It seems
as if someone had taken a gigantic pepper-pot and scattered them far and
wide so that some had fallen in all directions. If you were asked to
make a guess as to how many you can see at one time, no doubt you would
answer 'Millions!' But you would be quite wrong, for the number of stars
that can be seen at once without a telescope does not exceed two
thousand, and this, after the large figures we have been dealing with,
appears a mere trifle. With a telescope, even of small power, many more
are revealed, and every increase in the size of the telescope shows more
still; so that it might be supposed the universe is indeed illimitable,
and that we are only prevented from seeing beyond a certain point by our
limited resources. But in reality we know that this cannot be so. If
the whole sky were one mass of stars, as it must be if the number of
them were infinite, then, even though we could not distinguish the
separate items, we should see it bright with a pervading and diffused