of L/uminous Meteors. 



387 



Havanna* has taken the trouble to go through the Chinese lists 

 already referred to, the catalogue presented annually to the Bri- 

 tish Association by the Rev. Baden Powell, and the observations 

 of M. Coulvier Gravierf at Paris, and from each of these sources 

 to draw up tables showing the number of meteors in each month 

 arranged according to their colours. The following Table is 

 constructed from the totals of M. Poey's Tables, with some addi- 

 tional observations that he enumerates, but does not include in 

 his lists ; and with this difference also, that, for the sake of com- 

 parison, I have reduced the multitudinous shades mentioned in 

 the observations to white, the six principal divisions of the solar 

 spectrum, and red, yellow, green, and blue combined with white : 

 thus, those given in the Chinese Tables as yellowish red, and 

 those called reddish yellow, are classed together as orange ; and 

 again, bluish, whitish blue, and bluish white, are all counted as 

 white-blue. The first three columns give the actual number of 

 meteors observed, the last three the proportion per cent, of each 

 colour. 



These three lists appear at first sight very different ; and on 

 the difference in colour exhibited in his Tables of the Chinese and 

 of the English meteors M. Poey lays great stress. Yet this may 

 be a difference rather in the expression than in the reality. 

 There must always be some doubt whether the inhabitants of 

 the celestial empire, one or two thousand years ago, meant by 

 certain terms precisely the same colours as the French translator 

 understood to be intended ; and it is by no means unlikely that 

 they grouped together as orange (or rather yellowish red, or 

 reddish yellow) meteors which our countrymen, or our French 

 neighbours, would class as red, reddish, or yellow J. This is ren- 



• Comptes Rendus, December 15 and 29, 1856; and January 12, 1857. 

 t Ann. de Chim. et de Phys. vol. xl. 



* Since writing the above, I have been informed by Mr. Wm. Lockhart, 



2 D2 



