d, is at the intersection of the orbits, and the earth is
there too.

Such a conjunction may present the most impressive spectacle that the
heavens can afford. The Leonid meteor shower is, perhaps, the most
famous. It has been seen at intervals of about thirty-three years, since
early in the tenth century. When Ibrahim ben Ahmed lay dying, in the
year 902 A.D., it was recorded that "an infinite number of stars were
seen during the night, scattering themselves like rain to the right and
left, and that year was known as the year of stars." When the earth
encountered the same system in 1202 A.D. the Mohammedan record runs that
"on the night of Saturday, on the last day of Muharram, stars shot
hither and thither in the heavens, eastward and westward, and flew
against one another, like a scattering swarm of locusts, to the right
and left." There are not records of all the returns of this meteoric
swarm between the thirteenth century and the eighteenth, but when the
earth encountered it in 1799, Humboldt reported that "from the beginning
of the phenomenon there was not a space in the firmament equal in extent
to three diameters of the moon that was not filled every instant with
bolides and falling stars;" and Mr. Andrew Ellicott, an agent of the
United States, cruising off the coast of Florida, watched this same
meteoric display, and made the drawing reproduced on the opposite page.
In 1833 a planter in South Carolina wrote of a return of this same
system, "Never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell towards
the earth; east, west, north, south, it was the same." In 1866 the
shower was again heavy and brilliant, but at the end of the nineteenth
century, when the swarm should have returned, the display was meagre and
ineffective.

[Illustration: METEORIC SHOWER OF 1799, NOVEMBER 12.

Seen off Cape Florida, by Mr. Andrew Ellicott.]

The Leonid system of meteorites did not always move in a closed orbit
round our sun. Tracing back their records and history, we find that in
A.D. 126 the swarm passed close to Uranus, and probably at that time the
planet captured them for the sun. But we cannot doubt that some such
similar sight as they have afforded us suggested the imagery employed by
the Apostle St. John when he wrote, "The stars of heaven fell unto the
earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken
of a mighty wind. And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled
together."

And th