840 REPORT—1874, 
IY. Perroprcat Merror-SHowers. 
A collection of copious notes of the annual meteor-showers of August and 
December last, and of April and August in the present year, has been 
received, with more than ordinarily full details, from observers of these 
showers. An examination of them is unavoidably postponed, from their 
length, in this Report, and results of the comparison and reduction of the 
observations which are now in progress are reseryed for a future communi- 
cation. The annual August shower in 1873, although greatly concealed from 
view by clouds, was not much inferior in brightness when it was observed on 
the nights of August 10th and 11th to the considerable return of this shower 
in the year 1871. In the present year the August star-shower somewhat 
surpassed, especially in the brightness of its meteors, the intensity of its 
appearance on the two previous occasions. 
Few meteors were recorded on the nights of the 18th to 21st of October, 
1873, partly on account of cloudy skies; but the majority of those observed 
indicated, by their appearance and direction, traces of a slight return of this 
annual meteor-shower. 
No success attended the watch kept by Captain Tupman at Greenwich 
from 11" to 13", and by the observers at Stonyhurst College throughout the 
night of the 13th and 14th of November, for the return of the November 
shower of Leonids in 1873; a watch was also kept until 13" 15™ on the 
same night, with similar results, by Mr. H. W. Jackson and F. H. Ward at 
Tooting. A completely overcast state of the sky prevented observations on 
the following night. An organized watch was also arranged to observe any 
recurrence that might be visible of the Andromedes of November 27th, that 
formed a conspicuous star-shower in the previous year. No meteors of this 
shower, however, were visible, although clear skies prevailed at the observing 
stations on the 27th and on most of the other nights in the last week of 
November. A brief notice of an unusual number of meteors seen on the 
evening of the 23rd, at Mr. Prince’s Meteorological Observatory in Sussex, 
will be found in the notes of occasional star-showers at the end of this 
appendix; a solitary meteor (not an Andromede) was seen, in an attentive watch 
in clear moonless sky, between 7" 30™ and 8" p.m. on that evening, by Mr. 
M‘Clure at Glasgow. If the recorded prevalence was yet observable, perhaps 
at some later hour on that evening, as described, it appears highly probable 
that it was connected with the branch stream of the main shower of 
Andromedes observed and recorded very generally on the night of the 24th 
of November, 1872. As far as the Committee haye been able to ascertain, 
no traces of a return of the meteors representing Biela’s comet have else- 
where been recorded as having been visible in November 1873. 
With the exception of the August displays, the brightest annual meteor- 
shower of the past year was that of a well-marked exhibition of the Geminids 
on the nights of the 10th, 11th, and 12th of December, 1873. The state of 
the sky was fayourable for observations on these nights at certain stations, 
and unfavourable at all of them on the 13th, so that the termination of the 
shower was not observed. Nearly 200 meteor-paths were mapped; and the 
appearances of the meteors were described by observers at Heidelberg (where 
Mr. J. E. Clark obtained a clear view of the shower) in Germany, and at 
Birmingham, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Glasgow in England and Scotland, and 
the time of greatest frequency of the shower was approximately ascertained. 
