526 Meeting of the British Association. [ Oct., 
we might humbly confess our inability to explain why matter was 
impressed with this gradual tendency to structural formation, we 
should cease to look for special interventions of creative power in 
changes which were difficult to understand, because, being removed 
from us in time, their concomitants were lost ; we should endeavour 
from the relicts to evoke their history, and when we found a gap not 
try to bridge it over with a miracle. 
PuysicaL Science. (Section A.) 
The proceedings of this Section commenced on Thursday, August 
23rd. In giving notices of the papers read, we shall adopt the 
plan followed on previous occasions, and confine our remarks to 
those subjects only which are likely to be new to our readers, and 
appear to be of general interest. 
The first paper was a report on luminous meteors, read by Mr. 
Glaisher. In this report the Committee showed a marked degree 
of progress over their success in previous years. Not only have 
observations of three large meteors at the Royal Observatory, 
Greenwich, been confirmed by descriptions of observers at different 
places, so that the height and velocity of the meteors could be 
calculated ; but the accounts sent by different observers has in 
several other instances led to the same satisfactory result. The 
radiant indicated by the charts of the meteoric shower of November 
last, is situated within two degrees of the place which it occupied 
during the interval of greatest meteoric activity in the year 1833. 
The heights of the November meteors is shown in this report to be 
the same as that of ordinary shooting stars, or sixty miles above 
the surface of the earth. 
A strong probability exists of the occurrence, on the morning of 
the 13th of November next, of a more extraordinary meteoric 
shower than any that has yet been observed at the English 
Observatories, and the occasion of the return of the great No- 
vember shower being one of very rare occurrence, the Committee 
have provided themselves with two spectroscopes specially adapted 
for analyzing the light of shooting stars. The average velocity of 
eleven meteors directed from Leo is 554 English miles per second. 
The average velocity of four meteors directed from Taurus or 
Perseus is 19 miles per second. As the former radiant region is 
hardly 20° and the latter more than 100° removed from the apex 
of the earth’s way, it follows that the earth’s motion of translation 
is plainly recognized by its effect of increasmg the speed of the 
meteors from the former, and diminishing the speed of the meteors 
from the latter radiant point, Some observations on the spectra of 
meteors made at Hawkhurst by Mr. Herschel, are very interesting. 
