172. THE LEONIDS.--There is, however, a kind of star shower, of which the Leonids (radiant in Leo) is the most conspicuous type, in which the shower, although repeated from year to year, is much more striking in some years than in others. Thus, to quote from the historian: "In 1833 the shower was well observed along the whole eastern coast of North America from the Gulf of Mexico to Halifax. The meteors were most numerous at about 5 A. M. on November 13th, and the rising sun could not blot out all traces of the phenomena, for large meteors were seen now and then in full daylight. Within the scope that the eye could contain, more than twenty could be seen at a time shooting in every direction. Not a cloud obscured the broad expanse, and millions of meteors sped their way across in every point of the compass. Their coruscations were bright, gleaming, and incessant, and they fell thick as the flakes in the early snows of December." But, so far as is known, none of them reached the ground. An illiterate man on the following day remarked: "The stars continued to fall until none were left. I am anxious to see how the heavens will appear this evening, for I believe we shall see no more stars." An eyewitness in the Southern States thus describes the effect of this shower upon the plantation negroes: "Upward of a hundred lay prostrate upon the ground, some speechless and some with the bitterest cries, but with their hands upraised, imploring God to save the world and them. The scene was truly awful, for never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell toward the earth--east, west, north, and south it was the same." In the preceding year a similar but feebler shower from the same radiant created much alarm in France, and through the old historic records its repetitions may be traced back at intervals of 33 or 34 years, although with many interruptions, to October 12, 902, O. S., when "an immense number of falling stars were seen to spread themselves over the face of the sky like rain."