Page
19] arm of a whirling wheel; drive it against the air five hundred
feet per second, the mercury rises 16 deg.. The earth goes 98,000 feet
per second, or one thousand miles a minute. If it come to an
aerolite or mass of metallic rock, or even a cloudlet of gas,
standing still in space, its contact with our air evolves 600,000 deg.
of heat. And when the meteor comes toward the world twenty-six miles
a second, the heat would become proportionally greater if the meteor
could abide it, and not be consumed in fervent heat. It vanishes
almost as soon as seen. If there were meteoric masses enough lying
in our path, our sky would blaze with myriads of flashes of light.
Enough have been seen to enable a person to read by them at night.
If a sufficient number were present, we should miss their individual
flashes as they blend their separate fires in one sea of
insufferable glory. The sun is 1,300,000 times as large as our
planet; its attraction proportionally greater; the aerolites more
numerous; and hence an infinite hail of stones, small masses and
little worlds, makes ceaseless trails of light, whose individuality
is lost in one dazzling sea of glory.

On the 1st day of September, 1859, two astronomers, independently
of each other, saw a sudden brightening on the surface of the sun.
Probably two large meteoric masses were travelling side by side
at two or three hundred miles per second, and striking the sun's
atmosphere, suddenly blazed into light bright enough to be seen
on the intolerable light of the photosphere as a background. The
earth responded to this new cause of brilliance and heat in the
sun. Vivid auroras appeared, not only at the north and south poles,
but even where such spectacles are seldom seen. The electro-magnetic
[Page 20] disturbances were more distinctly marked. "In many places
the telegraphic wires struck work. In Washington and Philadelphia
the electric signalmen received severe electric shocks; at a station
in Norway the telegraphic apparatus was set fire to; and at Boston a
flame of fire followed the pen of Bain's electric telegraph." There
is the best of reason for believing that a continuous succession of
such bodies might have gone far toward rendering the earth
uncomfortable as a place of residence.

Of course, the same result of heat and light would follow from
compression, if a body had the power of contraction in itself. We
endowed every particle of our gas, myriads of miles in extent, w