226 



NA TURE 



[January 4, 1900 



these K Leonid meteors was thus observed by Mr. T. W. 

 Backhouse at Sunderland, ^ who found a pretty exact radiant- 

 point near /t Leonis, at 146°, + 26°, of seven " Leonids," one as 

 bright as Jupiter, leaving a streak for three seconds, and the rest 

 small ; seen with eight other meteors in ih. 20m. of clear sky 

 during some hours' watch before daybreak on that morning. 

 By an apparently just similar deception, in the bright shower of 

 Leonids mapped and assigned here to variousy^^? on the morning 

 of November 15th, 1896, a pretty compact region of divergence 

 was noticed north of Leo, in Leo Minor, of four or five meteor- 

 paths, at about 155°, + 35°,^ as apparently composed of " Leonid 

 stragglers." But at 154°, +40°, D('99) 118, there is a strong 

 enduring shower-series of yu Ursids, first well recorded in 

 November by Mr. Denning at 155°, + 36°, from about twenty swift 

 white meteors on November 26th-29th, 1876,^ and observed in late 

 years veryjfrequently on the Zd;<7«?^ dates of November ioth-i7th, 

 within a few degrees of that position. As it is found to present 

 itself also as'an active stationary shower during the preceding and 

 following months of October and December, no very cogent 

 reasons, it would seem, can be admitted to exist for describing 

 this shower's meteors, or those of the contemporary shower near 

 K Leonis, for want of better designations, as stragglers or erratic 

 members of the main meteor-stream of the Leonids. 



One or two tracks seen here, and some mapped by Mr. 

 Denning, on November 6th-i ith, appear to have proceeded from 

 known radiant centres south of the Sickle-stars, near o and ir 

 Leonis ; but with these scarce exceptions no signs of swift- 

 flighted meteors crossing Leo from south-eastern centres mlLydra 

 and Virgo could be noticed with the brightness and abundance 

 which those contemporary showers sometimes present on the 

 yearly shower-nights of the Leonids. The main body of the 

 ordinary meteors seen in these earlier nights' watches were pur- 

 suing leisurely, mostly short, but sometimes lengthy random 







courses from many scattered radiant sources of more or less well- 

 known positions among the constellations overhead, and in the 

 north, west and south quarters of the sky. Of all these slow- 

 paced systems, amounting in Mr. Denning's special list to thirty 

 or forty centres of very undiversified looking meteor-flights, 

 only one overhead radiant-point at a Ursae Majoris, and the 

 two south-westerly showers of the a-e and |-o Taurids were 

 marked abundantly enough by meteor-paths to be perfectly iden- 

 tifiable. A number of other centre-points absorbed the rest of 

 the recorded tracks in single, or at most in two or three con- 

 nected flights, too few to fix their radiants' real places certainly 

 during the far too restrictedly short starlight time of my three or 

 four fine nights' watch to show more of those scantily-escorted 

 flights or lonesomely projected flashes, and to disclose their focal 

 points and stellar features of appearance properly. 



From their persistencies, however, enabhng them to be 

 reckoned as belonging to the Bielid meteor-period, a projection 

 which I made last year of about 220 observations obtained 

 by different observers in former years, since 1861, of meteors 

 of that yearly period, November 20th-3oth,* exhibited more 



1 " British Association Reports," 1878, pp. 320, and 329. 



2 Nature, vol. Iv. p. 175. 



3 "British Association Reports," 1877, pp. 164, 167. 



4 Prepared about this time last year for Dr. A. Hnatek, of Vienna, who 

 has presented to the Vienna Academy of Sciences {Sitztings-berichte der 

 kaiserlichen Akademie, Mathem.-NaUirw. Classe, Bd. cvii., Abth. ii. ; 

 December, 1898), an elaborate investigation both of the Bielids' radiant- 

 I)oint and of those of ordinary meteor-showers visible at the same 

 time with the Bielids, from a widely amassed collection of meteor- 

 observations for the period November 2oth-3oth, including among those 

 made in Austria and supplied to him with numerous paths recorded at the 

 Observatory of Vienna by Dr. Weiss, and in addition to similar contributions 

 from Profs. Schiaparelli and Nyiland, and to many paths recorded in the 

 works of Dr. Schmidt, some published by Von Littrow, which were made at 

 the Observatory of Vienna as long ago as the year 1837. 



NO. 1575, VOL. 61] 



fully than the less numerous observations made on earlier 

 November nights this year could do, the relative strengths 

 at that epoch (and therefore probably also in a nearly similar 

 manner at the ten days earlier period of the Leonid displays), of 

 several of these zenithal and western streams contained in Mr. 

 Denning's Select List of Fifty ordinary co-Leonid Showers. 

 To extend accordingly the illustrations which longer observa- 

 tions would have yielded, of the large array of ordinary showers 

 included in Mr. Denning's Mid-November Radiant List a Uttle 

 further than the limited acquaintance, only with a few of them 

 which this year's observations furnished, it may be useful to 

 supplement this present partial review by a further position-list 

 and some particular descriptions of several ordinary meteor- 

 showers of the Bielid meteor-period, which were found to have 

 been either transiently active or steadily productive during a long 

 series of years, in those rather more comprehensive meteor- 

 path projections. A. S. Herschel. 



The Royal Society Catalogue and Psychology. 



In the original classificaiion of the sciences for the purposes 

 of the projected Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Literature, 

 Psychology was given an independent place. Recognising this, 

 the International Psychological Congress at Munich, in 1896, 

 appointed an English committee to do what they could to 

 further the scheme in the name of the Congress. Following this. 

 Dr. G. F. Stout, editor of Mind, then at Aberdeen, now at 

 Oxford, was asked by Prof. Michael Foster to prepare a 

 schedule for psychology. Dr. Stout sought the collaboration of 

 the present writer, who represented the Psychological Keview 

 and its annual catalogue the Psychological Index. In the mean- 

 time, at the suggestion of Prof. Foster to the present writer, 

 the question had come up in America as to the advisability of 

 suspending our Index (which is now common to the Zeitsch. f. 

 Psychologic, Berlin, and the Annee Psychologique, Paris), with 

 the preliminary understanding that if the Royal Society 

 Catalogue issued an adequate list in psychology, it would 

 be advisable to suspend the publication of the Index and 

 support the Catalogue. Dr. Stout submitted the schedule 

 he had prepared. 



After a long period, in which no communication of any kind 

 reaches Dr. Stout — nor has it yet ! — the printed report of the 

 conference of last June informs us that psychology has been 

 classed under physiology, and the present writer learns from Sir 

 M. Foster that the psychological schedule is to be cut up — if this 

 action be finally confirmed by the Royal Society — and fractions 

 of it inserted where place can be found for them under 

 physiological headings. 



Understanding that there is still a chance to reconsider this 

 action, I venture as one of the joint proprietors and editors of 

 the Psychological Index, whose existence is in question, and also 

 in behalf of the reputation of psychology, to say : — 



(i) If this action relegating Psychology to Physiology is 

 carried out, the Psychological Index will continue to be issued 

 and its- subscribers retained. 



(2) In that case some action is highly probable on the part 

 of the International Congress of Psychologists meeting in Paris 

 in the summer, seeing that they endorsed the former course ot 

 the Royal Society in giving the subject an independent schedule. 

 At that congress the representatives of the French and German 

 bibliographies mentioned are also to be in conference, with a 

 result that may readily be foreseen. 



(3) The present writer thinks he represents the competent 

 opinion among psychologists in saying that the day is past for 

 this sort of ignoring of the claims of one department of scientific 

 knowledge at the instance of another. This was amply shown 

 by the attitude of psychologists toward Prof. Richet's Bibliog. 

 Physiol. , in which a similar treatment of psychology is carried out 

 by one who attends psychological congresses and allows 

 himself to be made prominent in them. It is interesting to 

 know that Prof. Richet has been an active member of the Royal 

 Society Conference. 



Psychology is knowledge of the mind, not 01 the body — 

 whatever method it may adopt to solve its peculiar problems^ 

 and to class it under physiology is about as reasonable as to 

 class it under cheese — on the ground that cheese is sometimes 

 green, green is a colour, and colour is a mental state ! 



It may be added that no criticism of the Royal Society 



