10 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 

 METEOEIC SHOWER OF NOVEMBER 27, 1872. 



The scientific journals of Europe contain copious accounts 

 of the great meteoric shower on the evening of November 27, 

 only the end of which was seen in this country. Professor 

 Bruhns writes that at the Leipsic Observatory seven hundred 

 meteors fell, in the south and southeast, in the course of thir- 

 ty-five minutes. Between eight and nine o'clock an observer, 

 looking north, counted at the rate of twenty per minute. 

 About one out of six was as bright as a star of the first mag- 

 nitude, and most of the remainder were between the second 

 and third, only about one tliird of the whole being fainter 

 than the third magnitude. The brighter ones were generally 

 yellow, though sometimes green. 



The accounts from France and from all parts of Germany 

 are of the same general nature ; but it seems that in Italy 

 owing, perhaps, to the clearer sky the phenomenon appeared 

 to better advantage. At the Observatory of Moncalieri thir- 

 ty-three thousand meteors were counted in six hours, showing 

 the shower to have been one of the most remarkable of recent 

 times. 



BIELA's COMET IN ITS NEWEST ASPECT. 



On the evening of the 27th of November, 1872, Europeans 

 were favored with a shower of falling stars, which has now 

 become one of the most interesting of all on record. From 

 the great shower of 1833 dates the revival of a more intelli- 

 gent interest in the subject of shooting-stars, until at last the 

 studies of Newton of New Haven, Weiss of Vienna, and Schi- 

 aparelli of Milan have led to quite an exact knowledge of the 

 nature of these bodies. When finally there could no longer 

 be any doubt that some, if not all, of these meteors were re- 

 lated in a peculiar and intimate manner to the comets, it be- 

 came possible, in 1868, for Professor Weiss to state the prob- 

 able connection between Biela's comet and the meteors that 

 had been often observed about the first of December, and to 

 predict that we should probably experience a star-shower in 

 1872 on passing near to that comet. The shower came as 

 predicted it Avas well seen in the early evening twilight at 

 stations in our Atlantic States, and was very brilliant in Eu- 

 rope, 



