Star-Showers of Former Times. 349 
el. + ne | 
Anr. X.—Contributions towards a History of the Star-Showers 
of Former Times ; communicated by Epwarp C. Herrick, 
Rec. Sec. of the Conn, Acad. 
[Read before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, April 28, 1840; and 
. since revised.] 
A rutt account of the showers of shooting stars which have 
visited our planet, would much enlarge our knowledge of the 
system of bodies from which we receive these brilliant strangers. 
But a mere catalogue even, of all these displays is too much to 
“hope for, inasmuch as some of them have doubtless been con- 
’ cealed by clouds, and others’ witnessed only by barbarians. Of 
those which have been preserved by the historian, a complete 
collection cannot at present be made in this country, owing to 
the insufficiency of our means of historical inquiry. A large por- 
tion of the materials for the present paper was collected in a 
search which I made in 1837 and 1838, for the purpose of ob- 
taining evidence of the annual occurrence in August of an unu- 
sual number'of shooting stars. ‘The publication of the paper has 
| been delayed in the hope that it might be rendered less incom- 
| plete; but I have now concluded to offer it in its present state, 
trusting that those who have the opportunity, will supply its de- 
ficiencies and correct its errors.* i 
| (1.) 1768 years before Christ. “In the fiftieth year of the 
teign of the emperor Kié or Li-Koué, i. e. the year 1768 [before 
4 
—— 
Christ} the Chinese saw stars falling :” [des étoiles tomber. ]— 
Cométographie par M. Pingré, Paris, 1783, t. 1, p. 248, Ato. ; 
quoted from the Monarchia Sinica Synopsis Chronologica, an- 
hexed to Vol. 2, of Voyages de Mel. Thévenot, Paris, 1696. 
_ This statement is quite indefinite, and I cite it with some hes- 
Hation. The most probable meaning seems to be that a large 
humber of shooting stars was seen; but it remains to be deter- 
mined whether the original record warrants the construction here 
med, ; 
686, “the stars disappeared, and meteors fell like rain.”—M. 
furst’s China, London, 1838, 8vo. App. No. 1, p. 570. 
* A partial list of the dates of these meteoric showers, was given in b oP 
P. 182, and also in Vol. XXXV, p. : 
(2.) 686 B.C. In the reign of the Emperor Le-wang, B. ns 
Vol, xz, No. 2-—Jan,—March, 1841. 45 
