This wonderful correspondence of dates excited a very lively interest throughout the scientific world. It was inferred that a recurrence of the phenomenon might be expected, and accordingly arrangements were made for systematic observations on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of November. The periodicity of the shower was thus, in a very short time, placed wholly beyond question. The facts in regard to the phenomena of November 13, 1833, were collected and discussed by Olmsted, Twining, and other astronomers. The inquiry, however, very naturally arose whether any trace of the same meteoric group could be found in ancient times. To determine this question many old historical records were ransacked by the indefatigable scientist, Edward C. Herrick, in our own country, and by Arago, Quetelet, and others, in Europe. These examinations led to the discovery of ten undoubted returns of the November shower previous to that of 1799. The descriptions of these former meteoric falls are given by Professor H. A. Newton in the _American Journal of Science_, for May, 1864. They occurred in the years 902, 931, 934, 1002, 1101, 1202, 1366, 1533, 1602, and 1698. Historians represent the meteors of A.D. 902 as innumerable, and as moving like rain in all directions. The exhibition of 1202 was scarcely less magnificent. "On the last day of Muharrem," says a writer of that period, "stars shot hither and thither in the heavens, eastward and westward, and flew against one another like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right and left; this phenomenon lasted until daybreak; people were thrown into consternation, and cried to God the Most High with confused clamor." The shower of 1366 is thus described in a Portuguese chronicle, quoted by Humboldt: "In the year 1366, twenty-two days of the month of October being past, three months before the death of the king, Don Pedro (of Portugal), there was in the heavens a movement of stars such as men never before saw or heard of. At midnight, and for some time after, all the stars moved from the east to the west; and after being collected together, they began to move, some in one direction and others in another. And afterward they fell from the sky in such numbers, and so thickly together, that as they descended low in the air they seemed large and fiery, and the sky and the air seemed to be in flames, and even the earth appeared as if ready to take fire. That portion of the sky where there were no stars seemed to be divided into many parts, and this lasted for a long time." The Showers of 1866-9.