210 COSMOS. 



ted the American observations of 1833 to a very accurate in- 

 vestigation, remarks that the fixed radiation from the con- 

 stellation Leo is only observed properly after midnight, in the 

 last three or four hours before daybreak ; that of eighteen ob- 

 servers between the town of Mexico and Lake Huron, only 

 ten perceived the same general point of departure of the me- 

 teors,^ which Denison Olmsted, Professor of Mathematics in 

 New Haven (Connecticut), indicated. 



The excellent work of Edward Heis, of Aix-la-Chapelle, 

 which presents in a condensed form the very accurate ob- 

 servations of falling stars made by himself during ten years, 

 contains results as to the phenomena of divergence, which 

 are so much the more important as the observer has dis- 

 cussed them with mathematical strictness. . According to 

 him,f " the falling stars of the November period present the 

 peculiarity that their paths are more dispersed than those of 

 the August period. In each of the two periods there were 

 simultaneously several points of departure by no means al- 

 ways proceeding from the same constellation, as there was 

 too great a tendency to assume since the year 1833." Be- 

 sides the principal point of departure of Algol in Perseus, 

 Heis finds in the August periods of the years 1839, 1841, 

 1842, 1843, 1844, 1847, and 1848, two others in Draco and 

 the North Pole.% '" In order to deduce accurate results as 

 to the points of departure of the paths of the falling stars in 

 the November periods for the years 1839, 1841, 1846, and 

 1847, for the four points (Perseus, Leo, Cassiopeia, and the 

 Dragon's Head), the mean path belonging to each was drawn 

 upon a thirty-inch celestial globe, and in every case the po- 

 sition of the point ascertained from which the greatest num- 

 ber of paths proceeded. The investigation showed that of 

 407 of the falling stars indicated according to their paths, 

 171 came from Perseus, near the star tj in Medusa's Head, 

 83 from Leo, 35 from Cassiopeia, near the changeable star a, 



* Coulvier-Gravier and Saigey, Rccherches sur les Etoiles Filantes, 

 1847, p. 69-86. 



t " The periodical falling stars, and the results of the phenomena de- 

 duced from the observations carried on during the last ten years at Aix- 

 la-Chapelle, by Edward Heis," 1849, p. 7 and 26-30. 



X The statement of the North Pole being a center of radiation in the 

 August period is founded only upon the observations of the one year 

 1839 (10th of August). A traveler in the East, Dr. Asahel Grant, re- 

 ports from Mardin, in Mesopotamia, " that about midnight the sky was, 

 as it were, furrowed with falling 6tars, all of which proceeded from the 

 region of the polar star." (Heis, p. 28, from a letter of Herrick's to 

 Quetelet's and Grant's Diary.) 



