1859.] on the Colours of Shooting Stars and Meteors. 145 



yellowish red and reddish yellow) meteors in great numbers, but 

 these seem to be balanced in a great measure by the numerous observa- 

 tions of red, pale red, and yellow, as well as orange in the English 

 and French lists. It should be remembered that there may be every 

 gradation from red through orange to yellow, and it may be fairly 

 open to doubt whether the inhabitants of the Celestial empire gazing 

 at the stars one or two thousand years ago distinguished colours just 

 as their French translator would do. Again, the Chinese and French 

 give white-blue in great numbers ; but this is evidently the same as 

 the English blue. The English lists also make numerous mention of 

 white meteors, because in Prof. Powell's Catalogue the fact of a 

 meteor being white or colourless is usually noted, which is not generally 

 the case with either the French or the Chinese observations. The 

 number of French meteors classified as white-blue, is swollen by many 

 described by M. Coulvier Gravier as " white becoming bluish in the 

 horizon." 



The points of similarity in the three lists are, the small number of 

 green meteors — what there are occurring generally among those fire- 

 balls that change colour ; the small number of purple ; the absence of 

 brown ; and the fact that the large majority of meteors exhibit some 

 distinctive colour. They may be generally divided into two groups, 

 the one blue, the other orange, inclining more or less either to red or 

 yellow. 



If these appearances are really produced by the passage of pieces 

 of stone or iron through the earth's atmosphere during its annual 

 course round the central orb, it is very possible that the stream of 

 little bodies that intersects our orbit at one time of the year may 

 differ in composition from those that cut our path at another period. 

 It occurred to the speaker that this might be evidenced by a difference 

 of colour during their combustion, and that the monthly tables of M. 

 Poey afforded the means of determining whether such was really the. 

 case. On examining the Chinese record it was found that the pre- 

 vailing colour of a great shower of falling stars is very rarely given ; 

 the colour observations are almost confined to large single meteors ; 

 and little caa be observed beyond the fact that the blue meteors are 

 more numerous in comparison with the orange during the months of 

 August, September, October, and November, than during the rest of 

 the year. M. Poey has also made the remarkable observation, that 

 the Chinese meteors " show a remarkable constancy of tints during a 

 long period of years, when an equally constant but different scale of 

 colour prevails, and this for several successive periods ;" a fact that 

 may possibly be due to the changes in the periodical showers already 

 adverted to. If, however, we turn to the monthly tables of the Eng- 

 lish observations, we are at once struck with the marked difference in 

 the relative proportions of the different colours. Thus, confining 

 our attention to the months of August and November, when the 

 great showers occur, we observe a difference that cannot be attributed 

 to mere accident. In the following table red and white-red have been 

 added together, yellow and white-yellow, blue and white-blue. 



