FIRE-BALLS AND SHOOTING STARS. Humboldt relates, that a friend at Popayan, at an elevation of 5583 feet above the sea-level, at noon, when the sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky, saw his room lighted up by a fire-ball: he had his back towards the window at the time, and on turning round, perceived that great part of the path traversed by the fire-ball was still illuminated by the brightest radiance. The Germans call these phenomena _star-snuff_, from the vulgar notion that the lights in the firmament undergo a process of snuffing, or cleaning. Other nations call it _a shot or fall of stars_, and the English _star-shoot_. Certain tribes of the Orinoco term the pearly drops of dew which cover the beautiful leaves of the heliconia _star-spit_. In the Lithuanian mythology, the nature and signification of falling stars are embodied under nobler and more graceful symbols. The Parcæ, _Werpeja_, weave in heaven for the new-born child its thread of fate, attaching each separate thread to a star. When death approaches the person, the thread is rent, and the star wanes and sinks to the earth.--_Jacob Grimm._ THEORY AND EXPERIENCE. In the perpetual vicissitude of theoretical views, says the author of _Giordano Bruno_, “most men see nothing in philosophy but a succession of passing meteors; whilst even the grander forms in which she has revealed herself share the fate of comets,--bodies that do not rank in popular opinion amongst the external and permanent works of nature, but are regarded as mere fugitive apparitions of igneous vapour.” METEORITES FROM THE MOON. The hypothesis of the selenic origin of meteoric stones depends upon a number of conditions, the accidental coincidence of which could alone convert a possible to an actual fact. The view of the original existence of small planetary masses in space is simpler, and at the same time more analogous with those entertained concerning the formation of other portions of the solar system. Diogenes Laertius thought aerolites came from the sun; but Pliny derides this theory. The fall of aerolites in bright sunshine, and when the moon’s disc was invisible, probably led to the idea of sun-stones. Moreover Anaxagoras regarded the sun as “a molten fiery mass;” and Euripides, in Phaëton, terms the sun “a golden mass,” that is to say, a fire-coloured, brightly-shining matter, but not leading to the inference that aerolites are golden sun-stones. The Greek philosophers had four hypotheses as to their origin: telluric, from ascending exhalations; masses of stone raised by hurricanes; a solar origin; and lastly, an origin in the regions of space, as heavenly bodies which had long remained invisible: the last opinion entirely according with that of the present day.