Professor John Couch Adams, with the same patience and accuracy which had enabled him to discover the planet Neptune, concentrated all his efforts in tracing by means of the most laborious calculations the disturbing effects of the planets upon the November meteor stream in connection with each of the five orbits suggested by Newton. He came to the conclusion that the true orbit must be the largest, _viz._, the one having a period of thirty-three and a quarter years. Accordingly, he confirmed the prediction that the meteoric shower was due to return in 1866, and not only was that prediction confirmed, but the meteor stream was seen again in 1867, the procession stretching out along the orbit for such a distance that it required three years to pass a given point. Unfortunately, as far as Professor Newton and his fellow-countrymen in America were concerned, they were unable to witness the wonderful display, for on this occasion it favored our side of the world. In other words, the encounter between the earth and the dense part of the meteor stream which had caused such a spectacular display in 1833, preceded the time predicted for it only by the brief interval separating the successive passages of England and America across a given rotation space. “If we imagine that from some distant orb, a being were watching the event, knowing the nature of Newton’s prediction and uncertain as to the result, then this being would have seen the meteor swarm rushing onwards to the scene of encounter on the one part, and the earth sweeping towards the same point on the other. He could see that all over Europe and the western parts of Asia, and in a less degree over the foreshortened Atlantic, the meteors were already falling, the display would grow richer and richer, but after a while it would diminish in splendor. Finally, just as America began to show on the exposed hemisphere, the encounter would come to an end, the earth passing onwards to the relatively barren portions lying beyond the meteor orbit.” (R. A. Proctor, _The Orbs Around Us_, pp. 180–181.) Such was the occurrence which astonished the world on the nights of November 13–14, 1866, according to Sir Robert Ball’s experience, which he has portrayed in such vivid language in _The Story of the Heavens_: