THE QUARTERLY 
moOURNAL OF “SCIENCE: 
APRIL, 1872. 
I. METEORIC ASTRONOMY. 
By Ricuarp A. Proctor, B.A. (Cambridge), 
Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, 
Author of ‘“‘ The Sun,” ‘‘ Other Worlds,” &c. 
Ga Y awarding their Gold Medal to Signor Schiaparelli, 
in recognition of his researches into Meteoric Astro- 
“*  nomy, the Astronomical Society may be said to have 
definitely sanétioned the conclusions which have been 
deduced from Schiaparelli’s propositions. These conclu- 
sions are of such extreme importance, whether as viewed 
direC@tly, or regarded in relation to the inferences which 
seem to flow from them, that they may be regarded as 
affecting our ideas respecting the present constitution as well 
as the past history and the future fate of all the orbs which 
people space. I propose to take the opportunity afforded by 
the recent action of the Astronomical Society to consider 
the position to which meteoric astronomy has at present 
been brought, and to point out the connection between the 
results established by Schiaparelli, and the subject of the 
solar corona, which has recently occupied so large a share of 
the attention of astronomers. 
We need not consider here the history of the earlier 
meteoric theories. It would be difficult to show that the 
more correct ideas of the Greek and some of the Roman 
writers who have spoken of meteors were less purely 
speculative than the later view that meteors are mere 
phenomena of our own air, like lightning or the aurora. 
And although the theory that meteors are bodies which 
have been expelled from lunar or planetary volcanoes was 
discussed by mathematicians of eminence, yet it was not 
based on exact observation; so that the calculations of 
Laplace, Obbers, and others, serve rather to illustrate the 
skill of those mathematicians than to establish any conclu- 
sions of value. 
Moe. I. \(N-S:) a; 
