426 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE URANOLOGICAL 



Perseus and Taurus. Approximately, these points or " ra- 

 diation-centres" were the constellations towards which the 

 Earth was moving at the respective epochs ( 688 ). Saigey, 

 who had submitted all the American observations of 1833 

 to a very exact investigation, remarked that the steady 

 radiation from the constellation of Leo was observed, strictly 

 speaking, only after midnight, in the last three or four hours 

 before day-break; and he further notices, that out of 18 

 observers between the city of Mexico and Lake Huron, only 

 10 recognised the same general point of departure of the 

 meteors as did Denison Olmsted, Professor of Mathematics 

 at Newhaven, Massachusetts ( 689 )* 



The excellent memoir of Eduard Heis, at Aix-la-Chapelle, 

 which presents in a brief and condensed form very exact 

 observations made by himself on periodical returns of falling 

 stars at Aix during ten years, contains results respecting 

 the " centres of radiation/' which are the more important 

 because the observer has submitted them to a rigid mathe- 

 matical discussion. According to him ( 69 ), the falling stars 

 of the November period are characterised by their paths 

 being more dispersed than those of the August period. But 

 in each of the two periods there were observed to be, 

 simultaneously, more points of departure than one, these 

 being by no means always situated within the same constel- 

 lation, as since 1833 had been too hastily assumed. Heis 

 found in the August periods of 1839, 184], 1842, 1843, 

 1844, 1847, and 1848, in addition to the principal point 

 of departure in Perseus, two others situated in Draco and 

 in the North Pole( 691 ). "In order to obtain accurate 

 results in respect to the points of departure of the paths 

 of falling stars in the November period, in the years 



