already
entertained the opinion of their cosmical origin; and Chladni in 1794
formally broached the theory that space is filled with minute
circulating atoms, which, drawn by the earth's attraction, and ignited
by friction in its gaseous envelope, produce the luminous effects so
frequently witnessed.[1197] Acting on his suggestion, Brandes and
Benzenberg, two students at the University of Gottingen, began in 1798
to determine the heights of falling stars by simultaneous observations
at a distance. They soon found that they move with planetary velocities
in the most elevated regions of our atmosphere, and by the ascertainment
of this fact laid a foundation of distinct knowledge regarding them.
Some of the data collected, however, served only to perplex opinion, and
even caused Chladni temporarily to renounce his. Many high authorities,
headed by Laplace in 1802, declared for the lunar-volcanic origin of
meteorites; but thought on the subject was turbid, and inquiry seemed
only to stir up the mud of ignorance. It needed one of those amazing
spectacles, at which man assists, no longer in abject terror for his own
frail fortunes, but with keen curiosity and the vivid expectation of new
knowledge, to bring about a clarification.

On the night of November 12-13, 1833, a tempest of falling stars broke
over the earth. North America bore the brunt of its pelting. From the
Gulf of Mexico to Halifax, until daylight with some difficulty put an
end to the display, the sky was scored in every direction with shining
tracks and illuminated with majestic fireballs. At Boston the frequency
of meteors was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow in an
average snowstorm. Their numbers, while the first fury of their coming
lasted, were quite beyond counting; but as it waned, a reckoning was
attempted, from which it was computed, on the basis of that much
diminished rate, that 240,000 must have been visible during the nine
hours they continued to fall.[1198]

Now there was one very remarkable feature common to the innumerable
small bodies which traversed, or were consumed in our atmosphere that
night. _They all seemed to come from the same part of the sky._ Traced
backward, their paths were invariably found to converge to a point in
the constellation Leo. Moreover, that point travelled with the stars in
their nightly round. In other words, it was entirely independent of the
earth and its rotation. It was a point in inter-planetary