Instead of this, he patiently waited, and, as we have lately seen, the well-deserved honors have now been liberally awarded. In a very few years hence we shall be able to say the same of the once diabolical Darwin, and eight or nine other theorists, who must all be content to take their trial and patiently await the verdict; the time of waiting being of necessity proportionate to the magnitude of the issue. The theories of Schiaparelli, which, as Mr. Proctor says, “after the usual term of doubt have so recently received the sanction of the highest astronomical tribunal of Great Britain,” are not of so purely speculative a character as to demand a very long “term of doubt.” They are directly based on observations and mathematical calculations which bring them under the domain of the recognized logic of mathematical probability. Those who are specially interested in the modern progress of astronomy should read this article in the _Quarterly Journal of Science_, which is illustrated with the diagrams necessary for the comprehension of the researches and reasoning of Schiaparelli and others who have worked on the same ground. I can only state the general results, which are that the meteors which we see every year, more or less abundantly, on the nights of the 10th and 11th of August, and which always appear to come from the same point in the heavens, are then and thus visible because they form part of an eccentric elliptical zone of meteoric bodies which girdle the domain of the sun; and that our earth, in the course of its annual journey around the sun, crosses and plunges more or less deeply into this ellipse of small attendant bodies, which are supposed to be moving in regular orbits around the sun. Schiaparelli has compared the position, the direction, and the velocity of motion of the August meteors with the orbit of the great comet of 1862, and infers that there is a close connection between them, so close that the meteors may be regarded as a sort of trail which the comet has left behind. He does not exactly say that they are detached vertebræ of the comet’s tail, but suggests the possibility of their original connection with its head. Similar observations have been made upon the November meteoric showers, which by similar reasoning, are associated with another comet; and further yet, it is assumed upon analogy that other recognized meteor systems, amounting to nearly two hundred in number, are in like manner associated with other comets. If these theories are sound, our diagrams and mental pictures of the solar system must be materially modified. Besides the central sun, the eight planets and the asteroids moving in their nearly circular orbits, and some eccentric comets traveling in long ellipses, we must add a countless multitude of small bodies clustered in elliptical rings, all traveling together in the path marked by their containing girdle, and following the lead of a streaming vaporous monster, their parent comet.