362 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



hours, A. M. (10th) and within forty minutes ending at two hours forty 

 minutes, observed nineteen shooting stars, which with one or two ex- 

 ceptions moved in paths which traced back would meet in the constel- 

 lation Perseus. During these forty minutes, the sky was generally 

 overcast except a small opening about ten degrees in diameter a little 

 south of the zenith. He estimated that had the sky continued through the 

 whole time of his observation as it was at the most favorable moment, 

 he could not have seen more than one-fifth of the meteors that fell, and 

 owing to the clouds he saw less than one-half that fell in the space 

 visible at the best moment. From these data, it may safely be inferred 

 that the meteoric sprinkle' of August did not fail this year. 



M. Coulvier Gravier reports (Comptes Rendus, August 16, 1852) 

 that according to his observations at Paris from June 18 to August 

 13, 1852, the average hourly number of shooting stars seen (by one 

 observer ?) at midnight was, in the first half of July, about 8 ; from the 

 16th to the 21st, 11 ; from the 22d to 27th, 21 ; from August 2d to 

 6th, 38 ; on the 10th, 63 ; on the llth, 50 ; on the 12th and 13th, 45. 

 Sttliman's Journal. 



Lieut. Jonquieres, of the French Navy, in a letter to M. Arago, 

 states that on the 9th and 10th of August, while off the Sardinian 

 coast, he observed under favorable circumstances the shooting stars 

 which appeared at that time. The sky was clear and the meteors 

 were very numerous from the end of twilight. Between midnight and 

 4 A. M. of the 10th, the number was about sixty-six per hour. The 

 divergence of the meteors was quite constant from a point having a 

 right ascension of two hours, twenty minutes, and north declination of 

 sixty degrees. The next evening the meteors appeared less 

 abundant. 



NEBULA DISCOVERIES OF LORD ROSSE. 



DR. ROBINSON at the last meeting of the British Association 

 exhibited drawings of large numbers of nebulas as seen through the 

 powerful telescope of Lord Rosse. He stated " that the contemplation 

 of them was well fitted to increase the obligations of the astronomical 

 world to Lord Rosse, as well as to fill every mind with astonishment at 

 the wondrous revelations of his matchless telescope. Each of them was a 

 new proof of a former statement of his, that this instrument would 

 probably disclose forms of stellar arrangement, indicating modes of 

 dynamic action never before contemplated in celestial mechan- 

 ics. He referred to the drawings, in which the spiral or vorticose 

 arrangement of the stars and unresolved nebulas was first remarked 

 in its simplest form ; and to others already published where it presents 

 itself under conditions of greater complexity. He also referred to 

 the important fact that the class of planetary nebulas might now be 

 fairly assumed to have no existence, as all of them which have been 

 examined prove to be either annular or of a spiral character. Thus 

 M. 97, which was considered by Sir John Ilerschel the finest specimen 

 of them, and seemed even in his eighteen-inch reflector a uniform disc, 



