532 
NATURE 
[ Sept. 30, 1886 
ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA FOR THE 
WEEK 1886 OCTOBER 3-9 
(FOR the reckoning of time the civil day, commencing at 
Greenwich mean midnight, counting the hours on to 24, 
is here employed.) 
At Greenwich on October 3 
Sun rises, 6h. 6m. ; souths, rrh. 49m. 1°73. ; sets, 17h. 
decl. on meridian, 4° 2' S.: Sidereal 
18h, 21m. 
Moon (at First Quarter October 4) rises, 12h. 26m.; souths, 
16h. 54m. ; sets, 2th. 20m. ; decl. on meridian, 18° 28’ S. 
32m. ; 
Time at Sunset, 
Planet Rises Souths Sets Decl. on meridian 
h. m. h. m. h. m. ae 
Mercury ... 626 ... 12 5 17 44 4 52S. 
Wenusi:..) 4a Io 55 17 16 3 23N. 
Mars ... ... 10 44 34 55 19 6 20 45S. 
UpLer-co sce 0, 30) ee Tons 17 46 4 54S. 
Saturn .. - 22 43* ... 6 46 14 48 21 24N. 
* Indicates that the rising is that of the preceding evening. 
Occultations of Stars by the Moon (visible at Greenwich) 
Corresponding 
angles from ver- 
Oct. Star Mag. Disap. Reap. texito right for 
inverted image 
h. m h. m. a 4 
65255 SBuA- ©3:7007) 52.16 22 33 .-. 23 42°... 142 312 
3c. eC eAQuartiveie a5 4 22 29 nearapproach 39 — 
Oct. h. 
Omer oali7) Jupiter in conjunction with the Sun, 
Variable Stars 
Star R.A. Decl. 
hm. ‘One h. m. 
Algol 3 08... 40 31 N.... Oct. 4, 21 20 m 
A Tauri 3 544 ... 12 10'N. ... 5, (68 ae gion 
¢ Geminorum 6,574, .:. 20) 44)Ni 2. 9. eae Ow7; 
6 Libra 145479... 8 4 SY o>), 7 igh ee oe 72 
U Corone ... 15) "136! 25.32) 4 Nois2) 5; = GSeoTeTON ye 
S Scorpii : 161079)... 2283705. he Ch MM 
U Ophiuchi... 17 10°8 I 20N. 39. US RZ OUa: 
and at intervals of 20 8 
U Sagittarii... ... 18 25:2 ...19 12S. ... Oct. 5 0 Om 
eh © Ow 
B Lyre... 18 45°9 ... 33 14 N. pues 3 Cueg 
R Aguile wos) LO) FOTO:...15) dee ene ene M 
5 Cephei - 22 24°90 ...157 SON. ...',, ‘9/0 of 
M signifies maximum ; #7 minimum. 
Meteor Showers 
The coming week is usually a somewhat less fruitful one for 
meteors than the one just past. The Avietéds, October 7, R.A. 
31°, Decl. 9° N., form the principal shower ; a radiant in Musca, 
R.A. 46°, Decl. 26° N., and another near Polaris, R.A. 133°, 
Decl. 79° N., are also active at this time. 
METEORITES, METEORS, AND SHOOTING. 
STARS} 
Y OU are kindly giving to me an hour to-night in which I may 
speak to you. I do not have enough confidence in myself 
to justify me in speaking to such an audience as this upon one of 
those broad subjects that belong equally to all Sections of the 
Association. The progress, the encouragements, and the diffi- 
culties in each field are best known to the workers in the field, 
and I should do you little good by trying to sum up and recount 
them. Let me rather err, then, if at all, by going to the oppo- 
site extreme. 
Two years ago your distinguished President instructed and de- 
lighted us all by speaking of the pending problems of astronomy, 
what they are, and what hopes we have of solving them. To 
one subject in this one science, a subject so subordinate that he 
very properly gave it only brief notice, I ask your attention. I 
propose to state some propositions which we may believe to be 
probably true about the meteorites, the meteors, and the shooting- 
stars. 
In trying to interest you in this subject, so remote from the 
studies of most of you, I rely upon your sense of the unity of all 
* Address to the American Association for the / dvancement of Science, at 
Buftalo, August 18, 1886, by Prof. H. A. Newton, of New Hayen, the 
retiring Pres.dent of the Association. 
science, and at the same time upon the strong hold which these 
weird bodies have ever had upon the imaginations of men. In 
ancient times temples were built over the meteorite images that 
fell down from Jupiter, and divine worship was paid them ; and 
in these later days a meteorite stone that fell last year in India 
became the object of daily anointings and other ceremonial 
worship. In the fearful imagery of the Apocalypse, the terrors 
are deepened by there falling ‘‘ from heaven a great star burning 
as a torch,” and by the stars of heaven falling ‘‘unto the earth 
as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great 
wind.’ The ‘great red dragon having seven heads and ten 
horns, and upon his head seven diadems,”’ is presented in the 
form of a huge fire-ball. ‘‘ His tail draweth the third part of 
the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.” Records 
of these feared visitors, under the name of flying dragons, are 
found all through the pages of the monkish chroniclers of the 
Middle Ages. The Chinese appointed officers to record the pas- 
sage of meteors and comets, for they were thought to have some: 
what to say to the weal or woe of rulers and people. 
By gaining in these later days a sure place in science, these 
bodies have lost their terrors ; but so much of our knowledge 
about them is fragmentary, and there is still so much that is mys- 
terious, that men have loved to speculate about their origin, their 
functions, and their relations to other bodies in the solar system. 
It has been easy, and quite common too, to make these bodies 
the cause of all kinds of things for which other causes could 
not be found. 
They came from the moon; they came from the earth’s vol- 
canoes ; they came from the sun; they came from Jupiter and 
the other planets ; they came from some destroyed planet ; they 
came from comets; they came from the nebulous mass from 
which the solar system has grown; they came from the fixed 
stars ; they came from the depths of space. 
They supply the sun with his radiant energy ; they give the 
moon her accelerated motion; they break in pieces heavenly 
bodies; they threw up the mountains on the moon; they made 
large gifts to our geological strata ; they cause the auroras ; they 
give regular and irregular changes to our weather. 
A comparative geology has been built up from the relations 
of the earth’s rocks to the meteorites ; a large list of new animal 
forms have been named from their concretions ; and the possible 
origin of life in our planet has been credited to them. 
They are satellites of the earth ; they travel in streams, and 
in groups, and in isolated orbits about the sun ; they travel in 
groups and singly through stellar spaces ; it is they that reflect 
the zodiacal light ; they constitute the tails of comets ; the solar 
corona is due to them; the long coronal rays are meteor streams 
seen edgewise. 
Nearly all of these ideas have been urged by men deservedly 
of the highest repute for good personal work in adding to human 
knowledge. In presence of this host of speculations it will not, 
I hope, be a useless waste of your time to inquire what we may 
reasonably believe to be probably true. Andif I shall have no new 
hypotheses to give you, I offer as my excuse that nearly all pos- 
sible ones have been already put forth. This Association exists, 
it is true, for the advancement of science, but science may be 
advanced by rejecting bad hypotheses as well as by framing good 
ones. 
I begin with a few propositions about which there is now 
practical unanimity among men of science. Such propositions 
need only be stated. The numbers that are to be given express 
quantities that are open to revision and moderate changes. 
(t) The luminous meteor tracks are in the upper part of the 
earth's atmosphere. Tew, if any, appear at a height greater 
than one hundred miles, and few are seen below a height of 
thirty miles from the earth’s surface, except in rare cases where 
stones and irons fall to the ground. All these meteor tracks are 
caused by bodies which come into the air from without. 
(2) The velocities of the meteors in the airare comparable with 
that of the earth in its orbit about the sun. It is not easy to de- 
termine the exact values of those velocities, yet they may be 
roughly stated as from fifty to two hundred and fifty times the 
velocity of sound in the air, or of a cannon-ball, 
(3) It is a necessary consequence of these velocities that the 
meteors move about the sun and not about the earth as the con- 
trolling body. 
(4) There are four comets related to four periodic star-showers 
that come on the dates April 20, August 10, November 14, and 
November 27. The meteoroids which have given us any one of 
these star-showers constitute a group, each individual of which 
POU pews eer en ee 
