Meteors are gaseous bodies, which move through space in immense numbers, and in definite orbits. Drawn astray from these orbits by the attraction of the earth, they are set on fire on contact with the atmosphere, this ignition producing the phenomena of shooting stars. The product of this combustion is sometimes heavy enough as to fall rapidly, in the shape of stones, to the earth. More often it is an impalpable substance, which filters slowly down through the air, and is found in the shape of metallic dust, on the summits of snow-covered mountains and in the Arctic regions. About the middle of November the earth passes through a meteor zone—that is, an immense swarm of meteors revolving around the sun—and during this month there are always vastly more shooting stars to be seen than in any other month of the year. The brilliant sunsets being first seen in the latter part of November, their near coincidence in time with an unusual display of brilliant meteors, seemed to substantiate the theory that they were of similar origin. It is known that the telescope reveals immense numbers of these meteors too small to be seen by the naked eye, and it seems very probable that millions more are too small to be seen even with the telescope, mere meteoric dust that can only announce its presence to the eye by its refraction of the sun’s rays as they pass through it. When this dust falls it becomes visible otherwise, perhaps. We have spoken of its appearance on snow-covered hills. Sometimes it appears as a haze or dry fog. At least the appearance of any very remarkable haze, like that which obscured the light of the sun for weeks over Europe, in 1783, is now ascribed by science to the dust of enormous falls of meteors. Had this theory of the cause of the bright sunsets been the true one, however, there should have been unusual displays of shooting stars visible as soon as darkness came on after the sunsets, for meteors are always ignited by the friction of the earth’s atmosphere. As these were not seen, the meteoric dust theory did not gain a very general support, and the opinion of many scientific men was that we must wait for a more probable theory. When it came to be known that these remarkable appearances of color in the sky had been visible from different points of the earth’s surface ever since last September, a theory was offered by Prof. Lockyer, the well-known English astronomer, and the editor of Nature, a leading scientific periodical, which is now generally accepted as solving the problem. Mr. Lockyer thinks that these remarkable sunset glows are the late, but direct effects of the great volcanic eruptions which occurred in Java, last August. He believes that the enormous volumes of fine volcanic dust thrown out by these eruptions were carried into the upper air, and being borne by prevailing winds around and above the earth, the reflection of the sun’s rays upon them have produced the phenomena witnessed at so many different points.