270 REPORT—1874., 
as a star-shower only for a single year. The duplicate observations described 
in former Reports have been reduced at the request of the Committee by Mr. 
T. H. Waller, whose report of these calculations is added, and whose con- 
clusions of their real heights and velocities are without doubt very accurate 
and complete. 
The publication of Captain Tupman’s observations of shooting-stars in the 
Mediterranean during the years 1869-71, with the list of radiant-points 
obtained from them, shown on a pair of convenient charts, or plates accom- 
panying them, by Captain Tupman (recommended for immediate consider- 
ation of the Committee during the last two years), is now brought to a close; 
and the catalogue and charts have been sent to astronomers and correspon- 
dents of the Committee in England, abroad, and in America; and discussions 
of them in foreign scientific journals have appeared, showing the important 
light in which the appearance of this valuable new meteor-catalogue has 
been regarded. Its principal part, the comparative catalogue of his meteor- 
showers with those of other observers, and the charts on which they are 
projected, are presented in this Report, with Dr. Schmidt’s similar catalogue 
(the remaining two principal meteor-shower lists, of which no account has 
yet appeared at full length in these Reports), thus placing before readers of 
recent volumes of these Reports all the material contributions to this branch 
of meteoric astronomy that have yet been made. They are summed up in a 
very concise catalogue contained in this Report by Mr. Greg, who has 
selected (to corroborate such observations already published in his former 
lists) the greater part of Dr. Schmidt’s and Captain Tupman’s observations, 
and has included them with his own former collections, thus forming a very 
extended catalogue founded on all the similar work of his contemporaries, and 
omitting but few general meteor-showers from his copious list, observed chiefly 
by Dr. Neumayer in the southern hemisphere. 
Following the method of Dr. Weiss, of calculating the radiant-points of 
those comets of early and recent times whose orbits are believed to pass near 
the earth, a list of such comets for both the northern and southern hemi- 
spheres is annexed to Mr. Greg’s catalogue, and the cases where they corro- 
borate each other are pointed out. Many important and well-known comets 
are found to have modern meteor-showers as their present representatives, as 
would perhaps be still more apparent if more reliable data of their orbits 
could be used; but the numerous coincidences are yet striking enough and 
sufficiently exact to make the further cultivation of cometary astronomy by 
the help of star-shower observations perhaps within the easy reach of ordinary 
watchers, who will continue for that end to delineate meteor-flights observed 
on fine nights among the well-surveyed fields of the fixed stars and their 
constellations. 
APPENDIX. 
I. Merrors Dovsty OnsERvED. 
Detonating fireball of June 17th, 1873; Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia. 
Calculation of the meteor’s real path by Dr. J. G. Galle*. Although, 
from its great size and some other unusual circumstances of its appearance, 
the following description of this large meteor, extracted from the published 
account of it by Dr. Galle, might properly be presented in the next Appendix 
* Astronomische Nachrichten, Nos. 1989-90, vol. lxxxiii. p. 321 et seg., March 1874. 
Published also at somewhat greater length, omitting the mathematical formulz, in a com- 
munication by Dr. Galle, presented to the Meteorologische Section der schles. Gesellsch. 
fiir vaterl. Cultur at their meeting on December 17, 1873. See Jahresberichte der schle- 
sischen Gesellschaft, 1873-74. 
