A CATALOGUE OF OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 345 
star-showers in the year 1867, illustrating the brief duration and the limits 
of the geographical area of visibility of those showers. 
The expected reappearance of the November meteoric shower in the year 
1866 was such a rare occasion for careful observations that, in anticipation 
of its return at the appointed time, the calculations of astronomers had pre- 
viously been directed to determining the real velocities and orbits of shower- 
meteors. Of these bodies, the inquiries relating to the August meteor-ring 
led Mr. Schiaparelli to the remarkable discovery (which was shortly also 
verified in the case of the November meteors, at their reappearance) that the 
orbits of those meteor-groups coincide almost perfectly with the orbits of 
certain periodical comets. Some other investigations, of which recapitula- 
tions, owing to the number of observations of the November meteors con- 
tained in the Catalogue of the last Report, were deferred by the Committee 
until a more convenient opportunity should present itself for abstracting 
them, are contained in the last Appendix of this Report. 
The entire series of charts of radiant-points, of four of which lithographed 
copies were last year exhibited to the British Association at Dundee, were 
afterwards printed, and bound together in an Atlas for distribution to ob- 
servers, and to scientific persons and societies, of whose names and addresses 
a list is given in the same Appendix ; and they were forwarded to their desti- 
nations at the close of last year. A new edition of the Meteor Atlas has since 
been prepared, with three new charts, and with the addition of several 
observations and improvements not contained in the previous Atlas. To 
indicate the characters and positions of all the radiant-points at present 
ascertained to exist in the northern hemisphere, a list of the meteoric showers 
which it portrays accompanies the Atlas, and is inserted in the last Appendix 
of this Report. Some copies of the new edition having now been printed, to 
assist in multiplying them, the Committee contemplate offering the whole of 
these copies for sale to observers at the lithographer’s price. 
The direction of shooting-stars in the southern hemisphere has, during the 
past year, been made the subject of a Memoir by Professor Heis and Dr, 
Neumayer. A series of nearly 2000 observations, obtained by the latter 
observer at Melbourne during the years from 1858 to 1863, having been 
submitted to examination by Dr. Heis, with a view to determining their 
points of radiation, thirty-nine radiant-points of shower-meteors were in- 
dicated by these researches in the southern hemisphere. Four radiant- 
points of Dr. Heis’s list, which is given in connexion with the foregoing list in 
this Report, appear to be identical with four of the seventy-seven radiant- 
points observed in the northern hemisphere, leaving seventy-three separate 
radiant-points of meteoric showers recorded in the latter hemisphere alone, 
The general survey of meteor-showers, which at present extends to both 
hemispheres, accordingly increases the total number of radiant-points now 
recognized as clearly distinguishable from each other to about one hundred 
and twelve, or double of the number formerly reckoned in the list, as pre- 
viously stated in these Reports*. For the purpose of verifying and inves- 
tigating the connexion which apparently exists between certain of the radi- 
ant-points, the long duration and apparent fixity of position of others, and 
the dates of their maximum displays, a collection of further observations, and 
_ their regular discussion with a view to circumscribe the laws of the appear- 
ances of meteoric showers, will continue, on account of their increasing astro- 
nomical interest, to present an important subject of inquiry. 
; * For the year 1864, p. 99. 
1868. 23 
