OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 269 
at the greater distance of 30 to 40 miles from shore, and another day at a 
distance of about 17 miles. 
Time has not allowed of any thing more than safely to preserve and arrange 
our captures. On a future occasion we hope to give a full account of the 
results obtained. 
Report on Observations of Luminous Meteors during the year 1873-74, 
by a Committee consisting of James GuatsuER, F.R.S., of the Royal 
Observatory, Greenwich, R. P. Gruc, F.G.S., F.R.A.S., C. Brooke, 
F.R.S., Prof. G. Forsus, F.R.S.HL., and Prof. A. S. Herscuet, 
F.R.AS. 
(Puates XV. & XVI.) 
Tae appearances of meteors noticed in published journals, and otherwise 
ascertained by the Committee during the past year, include some striking 
examples ef such remarkable exhibitions discussed and investigated very 
ably by astronomers, as well as of others passing almost unobserved excepting 
by accidental gazers. A few such large meteors were doubly observed in 
England ; some have been visible in the daytime, while many other large 
and small fireballs have been described to the Committee, of which it is to be 
regretted that notices have hitherto only reached them from single observers. 
The months in which these phenomena have been most abundant were Sep- 
tember, December, and January last, April, June, and again quite recently the 
last few days of July and beginning of August in this year. The Report con- 
tains descriptions of the brightest of these meteors, and an account of Prof. 
Galle’s calculations and inquiries regarding the real course of a large meteor 
which passed over Austria on the 17th of June, 1873, with the probable 
path that he assigns to it. With the exception of those of Khairpur, India, in 
September, and Vidin, Turkey, in May last, no occurrence of a fall of aéro- 
lites, as far as the Committee is aware, has taken place during the past year. 
The annual star-showers have been watched for with the usual attention 
of observers in correspondence with the Committee, and the results of their 
combined observations are described, with accounts of some other occasional 
star-showers, at some length in the descriptive part of the Report. Although 
little important information was thus added this year to our present know- 
ledge of the well-known star-showers of January, April, and October, and 
the cometary meteor-streams of November 14 and 27, connected with 
Temple’s and with Biela’s comet (all of which, in spite of very favourable 
weather for their observation, were this year of not very conspicuous appear- 
ance), yet the fluctuating intensities of these showers at their successive 
periodic dates is an important element to record; and in the case of the star- 
showers of August 10th and December 12th of the past year, the watch was 
at least attended with more positive success. Duplicate observations of 
meteors were obtained in them, and the general centre of divergence of each 
of these two meteor-currents was pretty exactly ascertained. Bright meteors 
were more frequent on each of these two nights than is at all usual in ordi- 
nary exhibitions of those showers. It will be found among these observa- 
tions that the return of Biela’s meteor-shower on the 27th of November last 
disappointed expectation; and the small extent and rapid departure of that 
meteor-cloud from the earth’s neighbourhood is clearly shown by its visibility 
