98 report— 1877. 



Report on Observations of Luminous Meteors during the year 1876-77, 

 by a Committee, consisting of James Glaisher, F.R.S., R. P. Greg, 

 F.G.S., F.B.A.S., C. Brooke, F.R.S., Prof. G. Forbes, F.R.S.E., 

 F.R.A.S.,WAi J TERYi.iGiiT,D.Sc. ) F.G.S.,and~Prof.A. S.Herschel, 

 M.A., F.R.A.S. Drawn up by Professor Herschel {Secretary). 



The meteoric occurrences and the results of observation and research relating 

 to luminous meteors during the past year have presented many points of 

 interest and importance, and, as will he seen in the present Report, they 

 have occasionally furnished materials for discussion, of which the results 

 must he regarded as possessing considerable scientific value. 



A large part of the Committee's time and attention since the presentation 

 of the last Eeport has been bestowed on discussing and comparing together 

 the summaries and reductions of meteor-registers supplied to them by a few 

 active observers of shooting-stars at monthly and even at more frequent 

 intervals from their own and from more extensively recorded meteor obser- 

 vations, from which a large store of additional information on special and 

 ordinary showers of shooting-stars has been derived. The object at first 

 intended to be pursued by the Committee, of providing observers with a full 

 review of the existing lists of meteor-showers and of the radiant-points of 

 comets and meteors, with commentaries and instructions how to observe and 

 project the apparent paths of shooting-stars so as to note their horary num- 

 bers and to recognize their radiant-points, has, for this reason, not been 

 carried out. But the large accessions to the known orbits or directions of 

 individual meteors and of meteor-streams which the past year's observations 

 have contributed exceeds what the Committee has been able to report in any 

 previous year, and affords ground for the assumption that the brief delay 

 in its compilation which has thus arisen will not materially affect the utility 

 of a complete synopsis of meteor-showers, and of instructions to assist obser- 

 vers in tracing and identifying them, which, with more leisure in another 

 year to bestow upon it, the Committee hopes to provide regular and occasional 

 observers of shooting-stars with at no very distant period. 



A few stone-falls have taken place, or their occurrences have been an- 

 nounced, during the past year ; but none of these were remarkable for the 

 size or weight of the discovered meteoric fragments. On the 16th of August, 

 1875, a small aerolite, weighing about 14 oz., fell in the district of La 

 Calle and Constantinc, in Algeria. On the 25th of June, 18th of July, and 

 19th of October, 1876, aerolites are said to have descended in America, the first 

 in Kansas city, Missouri, about as large as and of the shape of a small oyster- 

 shell, which struck and nearly penetrated a tin roof, where it rebounded and 

 lay too hot to be touched immediately. Of these three aerolites little more 

 than the brief announcements of their falls has yet been published. A small 

 meteoric fragment weighing about three quarters of a pound fell from the 

 prodigious fireball of December 21st, 1876, near Rochester, in the northern 

 part of Indiana, U.S.; and aerolites in Missouri, Georgia, and Kentucky, 

 U.S., are stated to have been discovered, and to be now in Dr. Lawrence 

 Smith's possession, which fell from detonating meteors seen in the United 

 States on the 3rd, 20th, and 23rd of January, 1877. 



Particulars of these stone-falls and of recently discovered iron masses and 



