[footnote] * "Sir Isaac Newton said he took all the planets to be composed of the same matter with the Earth, viz., earth, water, and stone, but variously connected." -- Turner, 'Collections for the History of Grantham, containing authentic Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton', p. 172. Why should we not adopt this view, since we may conjecture that these planetary bodies, like all the larger or smaller agglomerated masses revolving round the sun, have been thrown off from the once far more expanded solar atmosphere, and been formed from vaporous rintgs describing their orbits round the central body? We are not, it appears to me, more justified in applying the term telluric to the nickel and iron, the olivine and pyroxene (augite), found in meteoric stones, than in indicating the German plants which I found beyond the Obi as European species of the flora of Northern Asia. If the elementary substances composing a group of cosmical bodies of different magnitudes be identical, why should they not likewise, in obeying the laws of mutual attraction, blend together under definite relations of mixture, composing the white glittring snow and ice in the polar zones of the planet Mars, or constituting in the smaller cosmical masses mineral bodies inclosing crystals of olivine, augite, and labradorite? Even in the domain of pure conjecture we should not suffer ourselves to be led away by unphilosophical and arbitrary views devoid of the support of inductive reasoning. Remarkable obscurations of the sun's disk, during which the stars have been seen at mid-day (as, for instance, in the obscuration of 1547, which continued for three days, and occurred about the time of the eventful battle of Mühlberg), can not be explained as arising from volcanic ashes or mists, and were regarded by Kepler as owing either to a 'materia cometica', or to a black cloud formed by the sooty exhalations of the solar body. The shorter obscurations of 1090 and 1203, which continued, the one only three, and the other six p 133 hours, were supposed by Chladni and Schnurrer to be occasioned by the passage of meteoric masses before the sun's disk. Since the period that streams of meteoric shooting stars were first considered with reference to the direction of their orbit as a closed ring, the epochs of these mysterious celestial phenomena have been observed to present a remarkable connection with the regular recurrence of swarms of shooting stars Adolph Erman has evinced great acuteness of mind in his accurate investigation of the facts hitherto observed on this subject, and his researches have enabled him to discover the connection of the sun's conjunction with the August asteroids on the 7th of February, and with the November asteroids on the 12th of May, the latter period corresponding with the days of St. Mamert (May 11th), St. Pancras (May 12th), and St. Servatius (May 13th), which according to popular belief, were accounted "cold days."*