298 REPORT— ISG'J. 



A letter from M. Amadee GuiUemiu to the Secretary of the Committee, 

 describes the state of the sky, at Paris, on the night of the 10th of August 

 as overcast, and, accordingly, unfavourable for observations of the August 

 meteoric shower. 



General Radiant-points of Shoot inr/stars. — Copious lists of shooting- 

 stars observed in Piedmont and Italy during the last two years have been 

 communicated by their authors to the Committee, whose object it has been 

 to reduce them, for comparison with the results obtained from the British 

 Association Catalogue, Avhenever a constant divergence a2:)peared to present 

 itself among the meteors, to specific radiant-points. In this inquiry their 

 labours have met with encouraging success by the complete verification of a 

 considerable number of the known radiant-points, and by the means of rec- 

 tifying the positions and durations of others, less certainly established by the 

 paucity of previous data, afforded by the additional observations. 



Mr. E. P. Greg having lately projected on the Celestial Maps, in use by 

 the Committee of the British Association, about 150 meteor- tracks, from 

 observations made last year under the care of Signer Denza, Director of 

 the Observatory at Moncalieri in Piedmont, and since published in the Me- 

 teorological Bulletin of that Institution, has been enabled to redetect and 

 verify the radiants AG^, M^, ^, M^, MG, Aj, , ; and more slightly the radiants 

 A3, J, SGj, S^, 3, NG, M^, -. The observations in question were made on the 

 evenings of the 7th-19th January ; and 30th -January to 6th February, 1868. 

 Two new radiants were also fati'ly obtained, not before noticed by Greg 

 and Herschel, — one for the evenings between the 29th of January and 

 (?) 6th of February, near Quadrans, R. A.=223°, N. Decl. 54° ; and the other 

 near /n Eridani, R. A. =73°, S. Decl. 2°, for the evenings of the 9th-19th 

 January, and at r Orionis, E. A. =68°, 'N. Decl. 6°, for 30th January to 5th 

 (■? nth) of February. 



The former of these, at Quadrans, is evidently identical with Heis, K^, at 

 R. A. 227°, N. Decl. 60°, for 15th-31st January, but must certainly not be 

 identical with the special shower, K^, 3, of Greg and Herschel for January 

 2nd, which, there is good reason to believe, is a shower of only twenty-four 

 hours' duration. 



Mr. Greg also finds in Signer Zezioli's observations, made at Bergamo, 

 April 25th-May 3rd, 1868, abundant confirmation of the radiants W, WG, 

 Q^, DG^ ; also of N^, OZ, and OZ^. 



Prof. Serpieri, in the ' BuUetino Meteorologico ' of TJrbino for Aug-ust 1868, 

 gives a radiant for eight shooting-stars on the 11th of July, 1868, the posi- 

 tion R. A. 200°, N. P. D. 35°, which almost exactly agrees with the radiant 

 MG. for July Ist-llth, as determined last year by Mr. Greg (Report for 1868, 

 p. 403) from Signer Zezioli's observations, made at the same time at Bergamo, 

 the position determined being at R. A. 210°, IV". P. D. 35°, as given in the 2nd 

 edition of the ' Celestial Atlas,' published last year by the British Association. 



Considerations of the space usually allotted in these Reports to observations 

 of luminous meteors (which in the present year is amply occupied), and a 

 sense of the scientific importance of the papers communicated, during the 

 past year, by their authors to the Committee, will only permit a list of their 

 titles and of the principal contents of their pages to be here appended. The 

 annually decreasing splendour of the ISTovember meteor-shower, and the 

 absence of its attendant observations, wiU, in a future year, enable the 

 recent contributions of special importance to meteoric literature to be care- 

 fully reviewed. 



1. "Le SteUe Cadenti del Periodo di Agosto osservate in Piemonte ed in 



