make no assertion of a similar character with regard to the meteorological phenomena? The one is just as amenable to law as the other, but the difference is that the extreme intricacy of the causes which affect the meteorological phenomena have hitherto prevented us from discovering the laws by which they are regulated. Perhaps the differences between the state of our knowledge of the astronomical and of the meteorological phenomena will be more conveniently explained by choosing a branch of astronomical science with which we are at present only imperfectly acquainted. Let us take, for instance, the showers of shooting stars, which are wont to occur on November 14-16. Every one knows that there was a superb display from this shower in 1866, and there were some reasons to expect that there might also be a superb display in 1899. As will be well remembered, this expectation was not realised, so we only cite the illustration to point out that there are certain kinds of expectation which stand on a very different plane from astronomical predictions of a more legitimate character.
Nor is it hard to see the reason why this is so; we know in a general way the orbit of that swarm of bodies whose incursions into our atmosphere give us shooting-star showers. There are, however, many circumstances in connection with the movements of these little objects, which as yet are only imperfectly disclosed to us. We have no very accurate knowledge as to the manner in which the shoal of meteors is disposed around the vast ellipse which constitutes its path, and consequently our predictions must necessarily be put forth with some feeling of insecurity. It is quite certain no doubt that the earth crosses the track of the meteors every November
