OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 77 



A large number of observations of shooting-stars during the August 

 period (in 1870) are also collected in the Catalogue, while the general 

 appearances of the meteors, and observations of their heights, are described 

 in this Report. It will be seen that while only six fireballs were so well 

 observed in England and Scotland during the past year as to enable their 

 heights to be determiued (on the 1st and 11th of October, 6th and 14th of 

 November, and 12th of December, 1869, and on the 20th of August, 1870), 

 the heights of sixteen shooting-stars were obtained during the meteoric 

 shower of the 5th to 11th of August, 1870 ; and twenty shooting-stars 

 recorded at Greenwich, during the same meteoric shower, were so well 

 recorded at other places that their real heights are at present undergoing 

 calculation. 



During the meteoric shower of the 14th of November, 1869, the sky, at 

 places in the south of England, was generally overcast ; but at the lloyal 

 Observatory, Greenwich, at Stonyhurst in Yorkshire, and at Edinburgh, 

 Glasgow, and Culloden (Inverness-shire) in Scotland, a clear view of the sky 

 was obtained during a portion of the time in which the shower appeared 

 to be at its height ; and a large fireball was doubly recorded by the ob- 

 servers at the last two stations, of which the height, obtained by calcu- 

 lation, is recorded with other double meteor-observations in the Appendix. 

 The advantage of maintaining a watch for the phenomenon at such widely 

 distant stations was the more apparent at the last return of the November star- 

 shower, since in America, on the morning of the 14th of November, 1869, 

 the sky was, throughout the United States, so overcast by a fall of snow 

 that no other announcement of the meteoric shower having been seen west 

 of the European continent, with the exception of the brilliant phenomena 

 observed in Florida and California, has hitherto been received by the Com- 

 mittee. The observations of the same shower in Italy, at Port Said in 

 Egypt, and at the Mauritius are described in the last Appendix of the 

 Report. Although the state of the sky was both favourable for its observa- 

 tion in Italy, and partially so at the other stations, it does not appear that a 

 distinct maximum of the shower was observed at any of those points of view; 

 but the number of the shooting-stars observed during the progress of the shower 

 rose and feU, sometimes very rapidly, through a great range of frequency and 

 of the average apparent brightness of the meteors. It maj' be inferred from 

 these results that the phenomenon of the November star-showeis is now 

 rapidly declining in its intensity, and that the stream of the Leonids, if it 

 should be crossed by the earth on the morning of the 14th of November in 

 the present year, will be found to have grown difiiise, and to have scattered 

 itself into groups of less frequent falling stars, with intervening " lulls " or 

 barren intervals, in which observers will be rewarded by the sight of very 

 few meteors, or in which it may happen that, for the space of many minutes, 

 no shooting-stars will be observed. 



Following the example set by Prof. Schiaparelli at MUan, and by the 

 Italian astronomers at Turin, Urbino, Rome, Palermo, and at other observa- 

 tories in Italy, whose collective catalogue of shooting- stars recorded since the 

 beginning of this year now numbers many thousands of observations, to con- 

 duct observations of shooting-stars as far as possible on stated nights, at such 

 widely separated stations as to increase the visibility of any meteoric shower 

 which might be traced, the Committee have decided, with a view to contri- 

 bute to the objects of the same well-devised scheme of observations, to confine 

 their immediate attention for the present to those nights of the year on 

 which long-known and well-established meteoric showers are annually 



