a68 SHOOTING STARS. 



together. There are however certain anomalies that have yet to 

 be explained. One of them is that many of these radiant points 

 continue in action for much longer periods than seems possible 

 on this theory ; in fact we have many well attested instances in 

 which the duration extends over five or six weeks, and of course 

 it is quite unreasonable to admit that a system of such vast width 

 can possibly exist in space as to occupy the earth so long a period 

 in passing completely through it at the rate of about one and half 

 millions of miles a day. 



In March, 1876, I commenced a series of watches for shooting 

 stars, and have continued them to the present time ; the result of 

 the two years' work being that I have observed 3,749 of these 

 bodies in 386 hours of work. My chief object all through has 

 been to discover as many new systems as possible and to get the 

 radiant points with accuracy. A large number of my observations 

 were made in the morning hours when the observer has not only 

 the prospect of seeing more meteors, but has the greater chance of 

 finding new systems than in the evenings when the sky has 

 already been pretty well explored. Meteors are always more 

 frequent in the mornings because that part of space towards 

 which the earth is moving in her orbit (called the apex of the 

 earth's way, and preceding the sun about 90° along the ecliptic) is 

 then favorably situated, and it is well known that the great majority 

 of the meteor systems are apparently grouped together in this 

 region of the heavens. Several hundreds of showers were found 

 by me, and a proportion of them appear to be new and tolerably 

 rich streams, that it will be important to re-observe in future 

 years. In order to supplement and confirm them, I undertook the 

 careful examination of many thousands of meteor paths that are to 

 be found registered in the published catalogues of various foreign 

 observers. A mass of them were plotted on star-charts, and the 

 radiant points determined from the intersection of their paths. 

 Thus I had a capital check upon my own observations, and it 

 was a satisfactory issue to note how singularly well the two 



