A CATALOGUE OF OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 129 



meteorite of Hainholtz, has been discovered near the Sierra de Chaco (Chili), 

 in the neighbourhood of the celebrated locality of meteoric iron of Atacama 

 (Comptes Bendus, 1864, Mar. 28). 



A new specimen of meteoric iron, weighing 20 cwt., is described at 

 Toconado, 120 miles north of the former locality of Atacama, where the iron 

 is exhausted. A breccia-like fragment of similar iron and stone, found at 

 Copiapo, 300 miles south of Atacama, has been examined by Dr. Haidinger. 

 The included minerals contain a larger proportion of nickel than the iron by 

 which they are surrounded. 



(4.) Aerolites. 



M. Wohler, who in 1860 analyzed the aerolites of Cold-Bokkeveldt, and 

 Kaba (Vienna Acad. Sitzungsber., 1860, July 5), reports the analysis by M. 

 Clbez, of the meteorites of Orgueil. Besides the usual inorganic constituents, 

 they contain 6 per cent, of a black amorphous organic substance, composed 

 of the organic elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, in proportions quite 

 similar to those in which they occur in lignite and peat ; in other words, a 

 veritable humus. M. Wohler infers from all the facts that wherever meteo- 

 rites originate, organic matter, — and hence probably, also, organized matter — 

 must have an existence. 



(5.) Catalogue of the Collection of Meteorites belonging to B. P. Greg, Esq., 



Manchester. 



The meteorites in this Catalogue are described under a new system of ar- 

 rangement, based upon those of Shepard and Bose, and altered so as to 

 bring similar meteorites together by their resemblance to different terrestrial 

 minerals. Great uncertainties still exist in the classifications adopted by 

 Shepard, Bose, and Beichenbach, over which this natural system of arrange- 

 ment in many instances possesses an advantage. 



Y. Papers bearing on Meteoric Astronomy. 



(1.) Cold days in February and May. 



Brandes, at the beginning of the present century, first pointed out the 

 existence of a hesitation in the curve of temperature of the air about the 

 12th of February. Madler, in 1834, drew attention to a similar depression 

 of temperature about the 12th of May. Erman, in the year 1840, ascribed 

 these cold days of the year to the obscuration of the sun by the passage of 

 meteorites across its disk. At the opposite extremities of their orbits, one 

 ring of these meteorites furnishes us with the meteors of August, another 

 passes us in November. At these latter periods, M. Petit has shown that 

 the temperature of the air undergoes a small but appreciable elevation. In 

 support of Erman's theory, M. Ch. S. C. Deville cites the mean temperature 

 at Paris of the cold and warm days in question for fifty-seven years from 

 1806 to 1863 (Comptes Bendus, 1865, Mar. 27). M. Faye remarks upon this 

 mode of accounting for the anomalies in the temperature of the air, that the 

 theory must be received with caution. A slight glance at Mr. Glaisher's 

 Table, showing the adopted mean temperature of every day in the year, as 

 determined from aU the therm ometrical observations taken at the Boyal Ob- 

 servatory, Greenwich, in fifty years, from 1814 to 1863, is sufficient to show 

 that a great break in the continuity of the temperature-curve, perhaps the 

 most remarkable of any in the year, takes place at the end of November, 



