"I'm free from my promise." Then remembering what had passed, in his weakness he fairly broke down. At last Moray did prevail on him to speak, though the thought of the pain he was involuntarily inflicting nearly gave the warmhearted Irishman a relapse. The house had been taken from the other side when he was making a fight of it in the verandah looking seaward. The last thing he had seen of Miss Grace, she was being carried to the river in the arms of a big barbarian. He had made a dash to the rescue, "but they were too many for me - bad luck to them. They knocked me flat on my back here, and I saw no more till ye wakened me. But you'll be going after her, sir, and you'll take me with you," added Mr. Rafferty. "You can lay me down in the bottom of one of the boats till I'm wanted; and anyhow, when the fighting begins, you may trust Jack Rafferty to come up to time." desperate odds. Hours had gone by before the boats were hastily supplied with some provisions and water; and if the start was effected at last, Moray saw only too plainly that it was because the crews were encouraged by the thought that a stern chase is a long chase, especially when the chased is the stronger, and has practically unlimited law. From Longman's Magazine. SUNS AND METEORS. IT may seem strange to associate suns and meteors, fixed stars and shooting stars. One can scarcely imagine bodies more unlike suns, the mightiest, because the most massive, of all the subjects of astronomical research, and meteors, many of which are so small that in their brief rush through our air they are entirely dissi. pated, and in a sense destroyed. For millions, nay, for hundreds of millions of years, a sun endures, pouring forth moment by moment supplies of light and heat the life of worlds circling around him — in quantities so enormous that the human mind is utterly unable to conceive them. The falling star glows but for a few seconds, and then its brief career comes to an end. Weighed in the scales of science, the suns which people space are found to outweigh, severally, such globes as our earth, hundreds of thousands of times; the falling star has also been weighed, and its average weight is found to be but a few grains. Mr. Rafferty's request, mad as it was, served the purpose of rousing Moray from his stupefaction. His child was gone; the settlement was seemingly evacuated by the enemy; whatever the chances, there was nothing for it but to take up the chase, without unnecessarily losing one moment. But it was his destiny in those two dismal days to have his patience strained almost beyond the endurable. This man, who had prided himself upon cool self-control, was perpetually breaking his teeth against obstacles nearly insur mountable. Matusin was dead or had disappeared, and the survivors of the garrison had vanished with him. As for the followers of Pangaran Jaffir, they had scattered themselves about through the town in search of any stray articles to plunder; and the boats they were accustomed to man were left in the bay beyond the forest. Before he could lay hands on Pangaran, before that chief could get the body of his people together again, much invaluable time had been wasted. Even then, with the scratch crews of strangers assembled round the Sanga prahus, it was hard work getting a flotilla to sea. The Sarambang people objected to being taken away from the joys of pillaging, and they knew, besides, that they were terribly overmatched, should the enemy be inclined to shorten sail and offer battle. Even Pangaran - and not unnaturally in the circumstances - gave the order for embarkation much against his will. His In former times it was the received common sense told him that if he were theory respecting meteors that they had not going to sea on a wild-goose chase, their origin in the upper regions of the he was staking life and reputation against air. But it was at length proved that, - Yet, as shooting stars have been unmistakably associated with comets, which seem so utterly unlike them, so have they now been connected, by evidence which seems too strong to be resisted, with suns. Quite recently, indeed, meteors of a certain kind have been discovered which tell us that respecting the noblest order of suns which no instruments made by man could have revealed. Let us briefly consider the line of reasoning by which it has been shown that large numbers of the meteoric bodies which reach our earth from outer space have been ejected from the interior of suns, or of bodies in a sunlike state. We may then examine the new discovery, and consider its bearing on the theory of the origin of meteors. instead of that long-received theory, a theory which had been rejected as too absurd for credence must be accepted. It was found that meteors reach our earth from interplanetary space. As Humboldt well expressed it: "They bring to the earth extra-terrestrial matter; they are the only messengers which reach us from regions outside the world on which we live." But the nature of their paths was long unknown. All that had been proved was that they travel in flights around the sun as their ruling centre. The proof was twofold. Because shooting stars are seen in showers on special days of the yearnot of each year, but still so often as to show that the coincidence of date is no mere accident-it is certain that they travel on paths crossing the track of the earth at particular points. Each starshower having a special date forms a distinct system. The second proof was equally decisive. The meteor paths during any great display always seem to radiate from the same fixed point on the star sphere, no matter how many hours the display may last, or how much, therefore, that point may change in position with regard to the horizon. It follows that their paths are parallel before they reach the earth. The last point is to be specially noticed. It not only affords a subsidiary proof of what was already established by the agreement of dates. It tells us something new about the meteors and their movements. The observer on earth is carried round the earth's axis during the display, by the earth's motion of rotation. This motion, though slow compared with the movement of the earth in her revolution around the sun, is nevertheless considerable in itself. At the equator, a point on the earth's surface moves rather more than one thousand miles an hour; in latitude 45° north or south, the rate of motion is about seven hundred and fifty miles an hour. (London is carried round the earth's axis at the rate of more than ten miles per minute.) Now the earth travels round the sun at the rate of eighteen and one-half miles in a second, and meteors would usually cross the earth's track with velocities greater than these, since a body travelling (as most meteors travel) around the sun, on an orbit extending far beyond the earth's, would have at the earth's distance from the sun a velocity of about twenty-six miles per second. The effects then of the earth's rotational movement, as hour by hour an observer's direction of motion (due to this cause) is altered, can but slightly modify the apparent direction of meteoric motion. Still it might be expected that in many cases these effects (which may be compared to the apparent change in the direction of rainfall, as our motion through the rain, in walking or riding, is modified) would be recognized. The circumstance that no observer of meteors has ever detected such effects shows that in all cases hitherto dealt with the velocities with which meteors encounter, or overtake, or pass athwart the earth are enormously greater than the velocities with which points on the earth's surface are carried round her axis, and greater also than the velocities which the earth can communicate to bodies approaching her from outside.* From Olmstead's demonstrated theory of meteors (the credit of which has been very calmly bestowed of late on persons who had done no more than note a few circumstances consistent with it) has been followed, since 1866, by a series of interesting discoveries. It has been shown that the meteors of November 13-14 travel in a period of thirty-three and one-third years round the sun in a path extending beyond the orbit of the planet Uranus, and passing very close to this orbit at one point. It has been shown further that the meteors of August 10-11 and of November 13-14 travel on the tracks of known comets. It has been rendered highly probable that every meteor system tells us of the course of a comet, though not necessarily of a comet now in existence, while every comet is followed by a train of meteoric attendants. This train, by the way, must by no means be confounded with the comet's tail-a very different formation and occupying an entirely different position. In the only case where the earth has ever been known to be approaching the track of a known comet, prediction was made (by Professor Alexander Herschel and myself) that a display of shooting stars would be seen, radiating from a particular point of the heavens, at the time when the earth was plunging through that comet's train of meteoric attendants; and this prediction was fulfilled to the letter. a body drawn to her surface from an indefinitely great The velocity which the earth could communicate to distance by her own attraction only would be nearly seven miles per second; but the bodies which come near the earth, or actually encounter her, are already travelling, for the most part, with much greater veloci ties, communicated by solar attraction; and she has not time, during their swift rush towards or past her, to impart more than a tithe of the velocity which she could communicate were she alone at work upon them, and they had no sun-imparted velocities. We may fairly infer that what has been shown of all the comets whose paths have crossed the earth's track is true of comets generally. When so much as this was known about shooting stars, it was natural that astronomers should begin to form ideas as to the origin of these bodies. Accordingly a theory was advanced in 1866 by Signor Schiaparelli of Milan, which, because no one at the time dwelt on any of its shortcomings, or advanced any other theory, has come to be regarded by many as an accepted theory, and was so spoken of recently by Professor Young, of Princeton, N. J., in his farewell address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. like manner the theory that meteor systems travel around the sun, or rather that all meteoric bodies reach our earth from outside with planetary velocities, is established by evidence which cannot be shaken; but the suggestion that meteors are drawn from interstellar space by our sun's attraction, and then by the casual intervention of one or other of the giant planets forced to travel on a closed path around the sun, is but a speculation, as little based on any real evidence as the old-fashioned idea that rain comes down upon the earth from some great reservoir of water above the crystalline. Of the general idea that meteors, and therefore comets, come to us from interstellar space, it may be said that in one sense it is manifestly probable, if not certaip, in regard at least to many systems of meteors. Of many comets and mete Schiaparelli's theory was this: He assumed that flights of meteors are travelling about through the realms of interstellar space in the form of nebulous clouds.ors we have to admit that unquestionably Under the attraction of some sun towards which their course has already in some degree directed them, they move towards the region wherein his family are travelling. If by chance a flight of meteors should come near enough to one of the members of such a family, it is deflected from the course it had been following, and may (under particular conditions) be retarded. If so the future course of that flight of meteors will be a closed though eccentric orbit around the sun attended on by that disturbing planet. Such closed orbit will necessarily pass through the point where that disturbance was produced by which the meteor flight was, in a sense, captured. The theory requires further that an immense number of such captures should be made. For our earth passes through great numbers of meteor flights, and it is certain that for each meteor sys tem (among those captured) through which our earth passes, there must be millions to which she does not draw near. the region whence they came on their last visit to the earth was that vast realm outside the solar domain which we call interstellar space. It is one thing, however, to admit this, another and a very different matter to regard interstellar space as a sort of breeding-place for meteors and comets. To explain them thus is to interpret a marvel by a miracle. It may be difficult to say whence meteors came to occupy in such inconceivable numbers the interstellar spaces; but it would be. hopeless to attempt to show how they might be understood to have been there from the beginning. But while there is this overwhelming negative objection to Schiaparelli's speculation, which in effect explains nothing, there is a positive objection of the most decisive nature. It is one which I pointed out long since, one whose validity has been admitted, and one which has never yet been in any way answered though Professor Young has suggested that possibly some way of answering it may yet be suggested. That this speculation-for it is obviously nothing more should be described by so careful a student of astronomy as I will not here enter on the consideraProfessor Young, in terms implying that tions, chiefly mathematical, on which the it is a theory based on the thorough inves- objection I am about to indicate is based. tigation of an adequate amount of evi- I will note only what is the certain result dence, is strange, to say the least of it. of applying mathematical tests. The giant One speaks of the Copernican system as planets cannot do what Schiaparelli's thethe received theory of planetary motion, ory requires that they should do. The but even Laplace's widely known hypoth-individual members of a flight of meteors esis of the origin of the planetary system travelling from interstellar space towards is not called the "received theory." New- the solar system may chance to pass near ton's theory of universal gravitation is received, but Le Sage's speculation respecting the origin of the force of attraction is regarded as a speculation only. In enough to one of the giant planets to be caused thenceforth to travel on closed paths around the sun; nay, the flight itself might be captured (in this sense) bodily. But there is no possible way in which a flight of meteors, consisting, like the November meteors (the Leonids) and the August meteors (the Perseids *), of many billions of billions of discrete bodies, could be so captured by a member of the sun's family, even by the giant Jupiter himself, as to travel on the paths which these systems actually pursue. As a matter of fact, if the Leonids have been cap. tured at all, as Schiaparelli imagined, it must have been by Uranus, whose cap turing power is utterly insignificant compared with that possessed by Jupiter and Saturn; while the Perseids, if captured by any member of the solar system, must have been captured either by some planet exterior to Neptune or by the earth herself; for the Leonids only approach the orbit of Uranus and the earth in their course around the sun, while the Perseids approach the orbit of no known planet except the earth. Now, taking the Leonids (for, be it observed, a single instance will suffice, and the Leonids have long been regarded as strikingly illustrating Schiaparelli's theory), we find that for a single member of this family to have had its path changed from one passing out into interstellar space to one having a period of thirty-three and one-fourth years - the actual period in which the Leonids complete their circuit-that meteoric body must have passed very close indeed to the globe of Uranus. A certain amount of the meteor's motion would have had to be withdrawn by the attractive power of Uranus, and as the velocity eventually abstracted is only the excess of the quantity abstracted during one part of the time when the body was near Uranus over the quantity added during the rest of that time, it is clear that Uranus must work very hard to produce the desired effect on a body which rushes past the planet with a sun-imparted velocity of several miles per second. When details are considered, it is found that the approach of a meteor to Uranus, as the meteor came in from outer space, would have to be so very close as to preclude the possibility that a flight of many billions of billions of meteors could all pass near enough to have that path assigned to them along which all the Leonids actually travel. And so with other cases with every other case where the actual periods, and therefore velocities, of meteors are known. The reader is not to suppose that the Leonids are the only November meteors, or the Perseids the only August meteors; I add these names to show which particular set of November meteors and which particular set of August meteors I am referring to. Despite the opinion of Dr. Young, that in some way or other this objection may be explained away, I venture to say with the utmost confidence (and I think undue confidence about such matters is not a fault with which I can be charged) that the giant planets cannot have captured one of the flights of meteors whose true period of revolution has been determined. It may be that some among the four hundred or so of meteor systems which the earth encounters in the course of each yearly circuit around the sun have been captured in this particular way; but, so far as known facts are concerned, and especially those known facts which led Schiaparelli to formulate his so-called the ory, it is certain not only that we have no evidence in its favor, but that all the real evidence is opposed to it. It was this which led me to believe that meteors have had their origin, or that at any rate multitudes among known meteor systems have had their origin, in another way. Note, first, that the researches of Stanislas Meunier and others have led many Dr. Ball, of Dublin, for example - to the opinion that some at any rate among the meteors annually encountered by the earth are her own children. In other words, there are reasons for thinking that during some remote past period the earth was able, being then full of the fiery ener gies of planetary youth, to eject from her interior flights of missiles - clouds of world-dust, so to speak with such veloc ity that the matter thus ejected was free thenceforth to travel around the sun, with no other subservience to its parent orb than is involved in the circumstance that, forever thereafter, the paths of such ejected missiles would cross, or pass very near to, the track of the earth. With regard to this idea, which at first seems fanciful in the extreme, I may remark that there seems reason to believe that every orb in space passes through stages of orb life which may be divided roughly into three; the sunlike, the earthlike, and the moonlike ; * and therefore we must recognize in the past history of our earth a time when her energies were far more active than those she now has. We cannot infer her power of ejecting matter from her interior, when she was in the sunlike state, from that which she pos Another classification may be suggested - the glow ing vaporous state (like the sun's), the fiery state (like that in which the giant planets seem to be), the lifebearing state (like the earth's), the state of old age (of which Mars seems to afford an example), and the deathlike state (which the moon seems to have reached). sesses now when she is in the middle of the life bearing portion of her career. When she was a sun she was a very small sun, a mere dwarf compared with the giant Jupiter when he was a sun, and a mere speck of light compared with the mighty sun which rules our system. Yet she probably possessed then eruptive powers compared with which those she now possesses are as nought. But Krakatoa taught us recently, as at other times the earth throes of Peru and Chili, of Sicily, Naples, Spain, and Iceland have taught us, that the earth's eruptive energies are even now in no sense contemptible. The probabilities are at least highly favorable to the theory enunciated by Dr. Ball. For the immense numbers of sporadic meteors encountered by our earth almost compel the belief that her track must be regarded as in a sense infested by meteors crossed, that is, by greater numbers of these bodies than traverse similar parts of the solar system outside or within or above or below (north or south *) of the earth's path. This would mean, of course, that the earth has had something to do with the strewing of this track with meteors; and as the earth most assuredly has never had the power of drawing meteors from paths on which they had entered under solar influence (as Schiaparelli imag. ined that the giant planets might have done) it seems to follow inevitably that the earth has given birth to this surplus stock of earth-crossing meteors. Let it next be noticed that there are certain families of comets which have been for many years associated with the giant planets. Many years ago, and long before I recognized the real meaning of the phenomenon, I wrote an essay, which appeared in a weekly magazine of wide circulation, in which I treated of the "comet families of the giant planets." I gave this name to certain families of comets which, though circling around the sun as their real attracting centre, yet have paths approaching so near to the orbits of the giant planets that we may fairly regard these comets as in some way or other dependent on the giant planets - each on the particular giant planet with which it thus seems associated. Now, as comets are known to be followed by trains of meteoric attendants, we may say that we have here a phenomenon closely akin to, if not practically identical with, the peculiarity in relation to the It is as correct to speak of north and south with reference to the plane in which the earth travels as with reference to the plane of the earth's equator. earth's orbit which Dr. Ball and others have endeavored to explain (and, as I think, have successfully explained) by as suming that millions of years ago the earth herself ejected those particular meteors which form as it were the extra population of the earth's orbit region. So that we seem justified in adopting here, also, a similar explanation. Of course if Schiaparelli's theory were anything more than a speculation, and still more if it deserved to be regarded as a received theory, we might hesitate before we rejected what would be, in fact, an explanation of the very peculiarity we are considering. But we have seen that not only has Schiapa relli's theory no claim to be regarded as a received theory, or as a theory at all in any proper sense of the word, but there are objections to it which are in fact ab solutely insurmountable. We therefore turn to the other explanation as one which here naturally suggests itself - we inquire at any rate whether the cometic and meteoric families of the giant planets may not be regarded as originally ejected, in the form of meteoric streams, from the giant planets, when these were in the sunlike state. It is manifest that we are justified in assuming that if the earth ejected meteoric bodies when she was in the sunlike state, the giant planets would have done so likewise. Therefore there are a priori reasons for regarding as probable the theory to which we have thus been led by a pos teriori considerations. Moreover, as the giant planets are still in a semi-sunlike state, we see that in all probability the meteor streams expelled from these planets would retain something of their origi nal coherence, that is, they would appear in company with comets (each comet representing a cloud of meteors originally expelled as a coherent group). Thus we could understand the existence of the comet families of the giant planets, though, of course, we can also understand that many comets formerly belonging to these families have disappeared as comets; indeed, we have been able to watch, in the case of Biela's comet, the process of disintegration, by which one of the members of Jupiter's comet family has ceased to exist as a comet, and remains only as a stream of meteors. But now two problems of interest present themselves to our consideration. In the first place, we have in the sun an example of an orb in that particular stage of orb life during which, we have been led to suppose, meteoric ejection takes place, |