256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Paul's Magazine " for November, 1872 : *' There will probably be a 

 display of meteors following the track of Biela's comet. At any rate, 

 the skies should be carefully watched. The shower of meteors (should 

 one occur) will fall in such a direction that shooting stars might be 

 looked for at any hour of the night. Those belonging to Biela's comet 

 could be very readily distinguished from others, because their tracks 

 would seem to radiate from the constellation Cassiopeia. So that 

 should any one observe, on any night between November 25th and De- 

 cember 5th, a shooting star following such a track, he will have the sat- 

 isfaction of knowing that in all probability he has seen a fragment or 

 portion of a comet which has divided into two if not three distinct 

 comets, and has followed up that process of dissipation by dissolving 

 altogether away." 



The prediction thus made was abundantly fulfilled. On November 

 27, 1872, there was a display of shooting stars second only in magnifi- 

 cence among those seen since the middle of the present century to the 

 shower observed in the early morning hours of November 14, 1866. 

 In numbers, indeed, the shooting stars of November, 1872, fully 

 equaled, if they did not exceed, the shooting stars of Novembei-, 1866. 

 Professor Grant, of the Glasgow Observatory, counted no fewer than 

 10,579 meteors between 5h. 30m. p.m. and llh. 50m. p. m. Four ob- 

 servers in Italy, w^ho severally limited their observations to the four 

 quarters of the heavens between the four cardinal points, counted in six 

 and a half hours 33,400 shooting stars. It appears that the greatest 

 number were seen between 7h. and 9h. p. m. Between 6h. 55m. and 6h. 

 56m. the whole of the sky around the radiant of the system seemed to be 

 occupied by a meteoric cloud. This region lay, as predicted, near the 

 feet of Andromeda. There remained no doubt that the earth on the 

 night of November 27th had crossed a stream of meteorites, following 

 in the track of Biela's comet. 



But now followed w^hat gave rise to considerable misapprehension, 

 by which it would seem that even some mathematicians of consider- 

 able skill have been misled. A German astronomer, Klinkerfues, tel- 

 egraphed to Pogson, the Government observer at Madras, " Biela 

 touched eai'th November 27th ; look for it near Theta Centauri " : mean- 

 ing, doubtless, what was in reality the case, that the earth had passed 

 through the meteoric train of Biela, and that it might be worth while 

 to look out for the retreating flight in the part of the heavens directly 

 opposite the point from which the meteors had seemed to arrive. 

 Whether Klinkerfues meant this, or whether, as some seem to suppose, 

 he meant that possibly Biela's comet might have been delayed ten or 

 twelve weeks, and so have certainly encountered the earth on Novem- 

 ber 27th, need not for the moment be considered.* Suffice it that Pog- 



* Strangely enough, Mr. Hind, the Superintendent of the " Nautical Almanac," has 

 written (in " Nature ") as though the comet had been in some way delayed ten or twelve 

 weeks between 1852 and 1872, so that the earth did actually " touch Biela," as Klink- 



