“Comets and Aerolites,” from Reynolds’s Series of Astronomical Diagrams, by James Reynolds, 1847. An aerolite is a meteorite, specifically, a stony meteorite consisting of silicate materials.
The falling stars you see in a meteor shower are from the “dust trail” left by comets as they circle through the solar system.
Image from Stephen Ellcock’s FB page “The Celestial Archives: Pre-Space Age Images of the Heavens.”