91V6 Royal Astronomical Society/. 



derms, nutnmuUtes, &c., is a formation superior to and distinct from 

 the chalk ; and if there be situations (which however he has never 

 seen) in which a species of nummulite be common to the uppermost 

 chalk and lowermost tertiary, they would only the more confirm his 

 view of transition from the one epoch to the other in some regions 

 of the surface of the globe. In the memoir about to be published, 

 the author will give the result of the comparison of the species of the 

 nummulites, whether collected in the Alps or Hindostan, with those 

 of the south of France by M. le Vicomte d'Archiac, who has obli- 

 gingly compared them.] 



XXXI. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from p. 150.] 



Dec. 8, T^XTRACTS of a Letter from Dr. Forster, of Bruges. 



1848. -L-^ " I have long wished to call the attention of the So- 

 ciety to a very curious fact in the chronology of lunations, if I may 

 so express myself ; but I have always been deterred by an appre- 

 hension that it had so much the air of superstition about it, that it 

 might, in many minds, rather excite ridicule than interest. Still, 

 however, facts are not to be despised ; and I have resolved to point 

 out to you, that whenever the new moon has fallen on a Saturday, 

 the following twenty days have been wet and windy. This must 

 depend on some cycle of lunations whose influence on our atmo- 

 sphere has hitherto escaped the notice of meteorologists. I first 

 perceived the coincidence to which I allude in Sussex, in the years 

 1817-27, and at that time thought it accidental ; but on accurately 

 examining a journal of the weather kept in my family by my grand- 

 father, my father, and myself, in succession, I find that in every 

 twenty Saturday's new moons, nineteen have been actually stormy 

 and the rest doubtful ; and this has been the case ever since our 

 journal began, a.d. 1767, up to the present time. I find, too, that 

 the greatest storms of wind on record have been during the month 

 following a Saturday's moon. It would be interesting to know 

 whether this observation applies to other latitudes ; and with a view 

 of ascertaining the same, it is that I have thought it worth while to 

 call the attention of the Society to the subject. For, during the 

 last twenty-nine years, I have been enabled, in some measure, to 

 predict the sort of weather that we should have for a long period, by 

 examining the calculated times of new moon. It may here be ob- 

 served, that stormy months, thus indicated, are characterised by the 

 prevalence of S.W. and W. winds. 



"Periodical and other meteors. — On the night of the 13th of No- 

 vember last, a clear interval occurring between 10** and 13*^ 50^, I 

 observed the sky to be marked by numerous small meteors shooting, 

 in general, towards some point in the heavens, as nearly as I could 

 judge N.N.W. ; but unfortunately I was not in a position to make 



