"The most wonderful sight I remember," says Hamerton, "as an effect of calm, was the inversion of Donati's Comet, in the year 1858, during the nights when it was sufficiently near the horizon to approach the rugged outline of Graiganunie, and be reflected beneath it in Loch Awe. In the sky was an enormous aigrette of diamond fire, in the water a second aigrette, scarcely less splendid, with its brilliant point directed upwards, and its broad, shadowy extremity ending indefinitely in the deep. To be out on the lake alone, in a tiny boat, and let it rest motionless on the glassy water, with that incomparable spectacle before one, was an experience to be remembered through a lifetime. I have seen many a glorious sight since that now distant year, but nothing to equal it in the association of solemnity with splendour."[70] SHOOTING STARS On almost any bright night, if we watch a short time some star will suddenly seem to drop from its place, and, after a short plunge, to disappear. This appearance is, however, partly illusory. While true stars are immense bodies at an enormous distance, Shooting Stars are very small, perhaps not larger than a paving stone, and are not visible until they come within the limits of our atmosphere, by the friction with which they are set on fire and dissipated. They are much more numerous on some nights than others. From the 9th to the 11th August we pass through one cluster which is known as the Perseids; and on the 13th and 14th November a still greater group called by astronomers the Leonids. The Leonids revolve round the Sun in a period of 33 years, and in an elliptic orbit, one focus of which is about at the same distance from the Sun as we are, the other at about that of Uranus. The shoal of stars is enormous; its diameter cannot be less than 100,000 miles, and its length many hundreds of thousands. There are, indeed, stragglers scattered over the whole orbit, with some of which we come in contact every year, but we pass through the main body three times in a century--last in 1866--capturing millions on each occasion. One of these has been graphically described by Humboldt: