348 Miss Zornlin on the Periodical Shooting Stars. 



have not been witnessed in the same splendour as in other 

 lands possessing a clearer atmosphere, and perhaps a more 

 excessive climate. Phaenomena of no small degree of interest, 

 have, however, not unfrequently been exhibited in this country; 

 these, in some cases, not being the less important, from the 

 evidence they afford that the periodical shooting stars cannot 

 be regarded as an isolated meteorological phenomenon. 



The most remarkable display of the November shooting 

 stars of which I have met with any record, as occurring in 

 Britain, took place in 1832; and as I believe that the phe- 

 nomena here referred to have not hitherto been brought for- 

 ward as connected with the periodical shooting stars, it may 

 not be uninteresting to insert some notice of them in this 

 place. Nor are these accounts less worthy of notice, from 

 the circumstance of their having been recorded before public 

 attention had been directed to the probable periodicity of the 

 phenomenon, by the grand display of 1833. A paper was 

 read before the Royal Society on the 13th of December, 1832, 

 entitled ' An Account of an extraordinary Meteor seen at 

 Malvern, November 12, 1832,' by W. Addison, Esq., F.L.S., 

 " in which the author states that he beheld, from the Malvern 

 Hills, a constant succession of meteors, of various degrees of 

 magnitude and brilliancy. The smaller ones were like those 

 commonly called shooting stars; others were much more 

 brilliant; and notwithstanding the bright moonshine, threw 

 a strong glare upon every object : they also left behind them 

 a long train of very vivid white light. The author witnessed 

 this scene for upwards of an hour, and it was still going on 

 when he left it. At one time he counted forty-eight of these 

 meteors during the interval of five minutes*." In the Lon- 

 don Literary Gazette of the same year, we find the following 

 account: — " It appears from the provincial newspapers, in 

 various parts of the country, that very remarkable phae- 

 nomena were seen, both north and south, on the morning 

 of Tuesday week [November 13th]. Fiery meteors and fall- 

 ing stars (as they are called) issued from the west, and il- 

 luminated the heavens in their course, leaving behind them 

 trains of brilliant white. The appearances seem to have been 

 very grand, and to have excited much admiration in the be- 

 holders." From these accounts, it must be inferred that the 

 .display of the periodical shooting stars on this occasion was 

 very splendid ; and also of considerable duration, commencing, 

 as it evidently did, on the evening of the 12th, and extending 

 to the morning of the 13th of November. The phenomenon 



* Abstracts of the Philosophical Transactions, vol. Hi. p. 159. See also 

 Phil. Mag. for July 1833. [Third Series, vol. iii. p. 37.] 



