OURNAL OF MAN.

According to Mr. Lockyer the meteors which we have been accustomed to
consider trivial or incidental matters in planetary and stellar
systems, no more important than the dust which the housewife raises
from parlor and chamber, are really fundamental and basic elements of
the Universe, capable of generating comets, planets, suns and stars.

If this idea can be entertained, meteors must be vastly more numerous
than the world has supposed. Cosmical space, according to Mr. Lockyer,
is filled with meteorites of various sizes, flying in many directions
with enormous velocities and moving in certain orbits like larger
bodies. Many observations have been made to determine the number of
these meteorites. Dr. Schmidt, of Athens, in seventeen years of
observation concluded that in a clear dark night an observer would see
on an average fourteen an hour at one station. Other astronomers have
calculated that if observations were made over the whole earth, ten
thousand times as many would be seen as could be seen by a single
observer. Calculating thus, it has been inferred that about 20,000,000
luminous meteors fall on the earth every twenty-four hours, besides
the innumerable amount of minute bodies too small to be seen by
telescopes--which some suppose to be twenty times as numerous as the
visible.

Prof. H. A. Newton makes some astounding estimates on this
subject--that the orbit of the earth is filled with meteorites, about
250 miles apart, making a group of about 30,000 in a space equal to
that of the earth. If such calculations are reliable, the query must
arise, How much effect can such a meteoric shower every day in the
year exert on the orbital motion of the earth, in retarding its
velocity? The effect must be greatly increased if, according to Prof.
Newton, the velocity of meteors striking the earth is about thirty
miles a second, varying from ten to forty.

From such a basis as this rises the grand hypothesis of Mr. Lockyer,
who is a courageous theorist, that all cosmic space is filled with
meteorites, that they go in swarms, and that not only comets but stars
are formed by conglomerate aggregations of meteorites.

Schiaparelli, in 1866, demonstrated that the orbit of the August
meteors was the same as that of the comet of that year. It is in
August and November of each year that we have the most brilliant
display of meteors in two distinct groups, or orbits. Those of August
come from a point in the co