“But the most sublime phenomenon of shooting stars, of which the world has furnished any record, was witnessed throughout the United States on the morning of the 13th of November, 1833. The entire extent of this astonishing exhibition has not been precisely ascertained; but it covered no inconsiderable portion of the earth’s surface.... The first appearance was that of fireworks of the most imposing grandeur, covering the entire vault of heaven with myriads of fire‐balls, resembling sky‐rockets. Their coruscations were bright, gleaming, and incessant, and they fell thick as the flakes in the early snows of December. To the splendors of this celestial exhibition the most brilliant sky‐ rockets and fire‐works of art bear less relation than the twinkling of the most tiny star to the broad glare of the sun. The whole heavens seemed in motion, and suggested to some the awful grandeur of the image employed in the Apocalypse, upon the opening of the sixth seal, when ‘the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig‐tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.’ ”—_Burritt’s __“__Geography of the Heavens,__”__ p. 163, ed. 1854._ [Illustration] The Falling Stars. A celebrated astronomer and meteorologist, says:— “Those who were so fortunate as to witness the exhibition of shooting stars on the morning of Nov. 13, 1833, probably saw the greatest display of celestial fire‐works that has ever been since the creation of the world, or at least within the annals covered by the pages of history. “In nearly all places the meteors began to attract notice by their unusual frequency as early as eleven o’clock, and increased in numbers and splendor until about four o’clock, from which time they gradually declined, but were visible until lost in the light of day. The meteors did not fly at random over all parts of the sky, but appeared to emanate from a point in the constellation Leo, near a star called Gamma Leonis, in the bend of the Sickle.... “The extent of the shower of 1833 was such as to cover no inconsiderable part of the earth’s surface, from the middle of the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west; and from the northern coast of South America to undefined regions among the British possessions on the north, the exhibition was visible, and everywhere presented nearly the same appearance. This is no longer to be regarded as a terrestrial but a celestial phenomenon, and shooting stars are now to be no more viewed as casual productions of the upper regions of the atmosphere, but as _visitants from other worlds_, or from the planetary voids.”—_Prof. Olmstead, of Yale College._