that the total quantity of unattached matter, so to speak, existing within the solar domain must be estimated rather by pounds than by tons is now altogether exploded. It would be truer to say that the totality of matter thus freely travelling around the sun must be estimated by billions of tons rather than by millions. Whether it is likely that there will be a display of meteors to-night (or, rather, to-morrow morning), is a question to which most astronomers would be disposed, we believe, to reply definitely in the negative. The display of November 13-14, 1866, was very brilliant; that of 1867 (best seen in the United States) was almost equally so; but successive showers steadily diminished. In other words, the part of the system crossed by the earth in 1866 and 1867 was very rich, but the part which she crossed afterwards (the rich part having passed far on towards the remote aphelion of the system outside the orbit of Uranus) was less rich. For the last few years very few November meteors have been seen, though the few stragglers which have been seen, and have been identified as belonging to the family by their paths athwart the star-depths, have been almost as interesting to astronomers as the showers of such bodies seen in 1799, 1833, 1866, and 1867. But it is not altogether impossible that in the small hours 'ayont the twal' to-morrow morning a shower of meteors may be seen. For Schiaparelli (the Italian astronomer who first started the ideas which led when properly followed up to the discovery of the relations existing between meteors and comets) asserts that it has happened before now that the November meteors have appeared in great numbers in years lying midway between the times of _maximum_ display. These times are separated on the average by about 33-1/4 years. Thus, in 1799, there was a great display of November meteors, a shower rendered specially celebrated by Humboldt's description. In 1833 there was another, the display which so terrified the negroes of South Carolina, but more interesting scientifically as described by Arago. In 1866 the shower again attained its _maximum_ splendour, though the display of 1867 was little inferior. It will not be till 1899 that another great shower of November meteors may be confidently looked for. But if Schiaparelli be right, it is quite possible that there may be a shower this year, due to some scattered flight of the November meteors which, delayed accidentally (through some special perturbation) many hundreds of years ago, has come in the course of ages to travel nearly half a circuit behind the richest part of the system, the 'gem of the meteor-ring,' as it has been poetically called. Even, however, though no display of November meteors should be seen, yet the recognition of even a few scattered stragglers would be exceedingly interesting to astronomers. A single meteor seen to-night which could be regarded as certainly