The theory of the actual disintegration of comets was enunciated by Schiaparelli in 1873, and developed in his work ‘Le Stelle Cadenti.’ He was led to regard comets as cosmical clouds formed in space by “the local concentration of celestial matter.” He then remarks that a cosmical cloud seldom penetrates to the interior of the Solar System, “unless it has been transformed into a parabolic current,” which may occupy years, or centuries, in passing its perihelion, “forming in space a river, whose transverse dimensions are very small with respect to its length: of such currents, those which are encountered by the earth in its annual motion are rendered visible to us under the form of showers of meteors diverging from a certain radiant.” Schiaparelli next pointed out that when the current of meteors encounters a planet, the resulting perturbations cause some of the meteoric bodies to move in separate orbits, forming the bolides and aerolites which fall from the sky at intervals. “The term _falling stars_” he says, “expresses simply and precisely the truth respecting them. These bodies have the same relation to comets that the small planets between Mars and Jupiter have to the larger planets.” In the third chapter of his ‘Le Stelle Cadenti’ he explicitly states that “the meteoric currents are the products of the dissolution of comets, and consist of minute particles which certain comets have abandoned along their orbits, by reason of the disintegrating force which the Sun and planets exert on the rare materials of which they are composed.”