Bessel*
concluded from this "that a dense group of the bodies composing the great
ring may have reached that part of the Earth in which England is situated,
while the more eastern districts of the Earth might be passing at the time
through a part of the meteoric ring proportionally less densely studded with
bodies."
[footnote] *From a letter to myself, dated Jan. 24th, 1838. The enormous
swarm of falling stars in November, 1799, was almost exclusively seen in
America, where it was witnessed from New Herrnhut in Greenland to the
equator. The swarms of 1831 and 1832 were visible only in Europe, and those
of 1833 and 1834 only in the United States of North America.
If the hypothesis of a regular progression or oscillation of the nodes
should acquire greater weight, special interest will be attached to the
investigation of older observations. The Chinese annals, in which great
falls of shooting stars, as well as the phenomena of comets, are recorded,
go back beyond the age of Tyrt??s, or the second Messenian war. They give a
description of two streams in the month of March, one of which is 687 years
anterior to the Christian era. Edward Biot has observed that among the
fifty-two phenomena which he has collected from the Chinese annals, those
that were of most frequent recurrence are recorded at periods nearly
corresponding with the 20th and 22d of July, O.
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