Professor Olmsted, who has paid considerable attention to the subject, has indeed attempted to connect the great November shower with the zodial light, which last he considers a nebulous body, of an elongated form, whose external portions, at this time of the year, lie across the earth's path. (See Silliman's Journal for 1837, vol. xxxiii. No. 2, p. 392.) He even gives its periods, (about six months,) the aphelion of the orbit being near the earth's orbit, and the perihelion within Mercury's. In this way he attempts to explain both phenomena; but as the zodial light is seen unchanged all the year round in tropical latitudes, it is not the kind of body supposed by Olmsted, and the theory adds nothing to our knowledge. Others have imagined rings of nebulous matter, in which all the separate parts are moving in the same orbit around the sun, with a retrograde motion, and this, with some modifications, is the current theory of the day. The principal arguments rested on, for the support of this view, are derived from the great shower of 1833, in which a common radiant point was observed, and confirmed subsequently by the radiant of other years, in the same month of November. As this point is almost tangential to the earth's orbit at this season, the earth meets the nebulous ring moving in the contrary direction, and thus confers on these meteors the necessary velocity that is thought to be demanded by observation.
Now, our theory gives a totally different explanation of the phenomenon. We contend that a retrograde motion of such a nebulous mass, is subversive of our whole theory; and we must be permitted to examine certain points, hitherto disregarded by those entertaining antagonist views. It is supposed that the meteors in 1833 fell for eight or nine hours. The orbital velocity of the earth is more than 1,000 miles per minute, and the orbital velocity of the nebulous zone must have had a similar velocity. During the nine hours of meteoric display, therefore, the earth traversed 500,000 miles of her orbit, which would give 1,000,000 miles for the depth of the nebulous stratum. But if of such vast extent, how happened it that the only part of the earth in which these were visible in great density, was the United States, or a space embraced between the latitudes of 50° and 20° north, and the longitudes 60° and 100° west, (and these are the widest limits,) comprising only 1/40 of the surface of the globe? To a calm inquirer, this difficulty seems insurmountable. The author was then in the Mediterranean, on deck the greatest part of the night,--the weather fine, and nothing unusual visible in the heavens; from other sources he has also derived similar information. Yet, were the earth then passing through a stratum of meteors 1,000,000 miles in extent, it is utterly inconceivable that other portions of the earth escaped. Much stress is also laid on the fact that these meteors in 1833, passed from east to west generally, as they ought to do, if tangential to the earth in her orbit; but on the same phenomenon occurring in 1799, when the earth was in precisely the same part of her orbit, Humboldt says distinctly, "the direction (of the meteors) was very regular from north to south." How could this possibly happen, and at the same time be moving tangentially to the orbit?