[9] Chief Justice Parsons, it is said, used to say that moment was one of the most exciting of his life; and he could not forbear throwing up his hat and joining in the shout with which the boys saluted the first returning light of the sun.
[10] Since the first edition of this memoir, the whole subject of meteoric stones has been more thoroughly investigated by astronomers. Professor Loomis, of New Haven, says (Elements of Astronomy, 1869, page 209), “In the year 1833, shooting stars appeared in extraordinary numbers, on the morning of November 14. It was estimated that they fell at the rate of five hundred and seventy-five per minute. Most of these meteors moved in paths, which, if traced backward, would meet in a point near Gamma, in the constellation Leo. A similar exhibition took place on the 12th of November, 1799, and there are recorded ten other similar appearances at about the same period of the year.
“There was a repetition of this remarkable display of meteors on the morning of November 14, 1866, when the number amounted to one hundred and twenty-six per minute; also November 14, 1867, when the number of meteors for a short time amounted to two hundred and twenty per minute; and November 14, 1868, the display was about equally remarkable.”
Professor Loomis concludes that “these meteors belong to a system of bodies describing an elliptic orbit about the sun, and making a revolution in thirty-three years.”
The Weston meteor, or aerolite, observed by Dr. Bowditch, is mentioned by Professor Loomis, as one of “great brilliancy.” “The entire weight of the fragments discovered was at least three hundred pounds.... The length of the visible path of this meteor exceeded one hundred miles. It moved about fifteen miles per second.”
[11] A fifth was printed several years afterwards, on which Mr. Bowditch made some notes, and which he meant to have published, but death prevented him from so doing.
[12] Since the first edition of this memoir, one of the most extraordinary results ever obtained in astronomy by the use of these same methods of investigation has been made known. Messrs. Leverrier, a French astronomer, and Adams of England, calculated very exactly the general characteristics and course of a planet, which, from the disturbances of the courses of other well-known planets, was supposed to exist. In 1846, Leverrier requested a German astronomer to point his telescope, at a certain time, towards a certain part of the heavens, and there was the long-suspected planet, previously never seen! It was named Neptune. It is sixty times larger than our earth, and its orbit is nearly thirty times farther distant from the sun.
[13] Within the last few years numerous other smaller bodies (asteroids) have been discovered—not less than eighty being now known.