OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. ( J9 



meteorites, together with a review of recent progress in the special ex- 

 amination and investigation of certain meteoric stones and irons, are inclu- 

 ded in the last Appendix of this Beport. 



Of the detonating fireballs visible in 1870-77, two appear to have been of 

 unusual magnificence, that which passed over the northern States of America 

 on the 21st of December last having traversed a distance of about 1000 miles, 

 from near the river Kansas to near the town of Eric and the western boundary 

 of New York state, appearing in a great part of this prodigious flight to 

 consist of a multitude of fireballs pursuing each other in a cluster of great 

 length and breadth, produced apparently by a disruption of the meteor 

 attended with very loud explosions about the middle of its course. Another 

 surpassingly bright detonating fireball was seen in Cape Colony, South Africa, 

 on the evening of the 16th of March, 1877, the light and the violence of 

 whose explosion, like those of the last meteor, were quite unusual. A deto- 

 nating- fireball passed over the southern counties of Ireland on the 6th of 

 April last, from Wieklow to Cork, off the coast of which latter county it 

 burst with a very loud explosion. In the Appendix, where these large 

 meteors are described a uotice of some recent memoirs by Professor von 

 Nicssl, of Briinn, in Moravia, will also be found, showing that two deto- 

 nating fireballs seen in Bohemia and Hungary on the 10th of April, 1S74, 

 and 9th of April, 1870, were directed from a common radiant-point in 

 Cassiopeia, and must without doubt have been pursuing almost identical orbits 

 round the sun, which Professor von Nicssl considers there is evidence enough 

 to show were of a hyperbolic form. 



Descriptions of various large meteors seen in England are given in a fire- 

 ball list, and also in the first Appendix of this Eeport with more detail, 

 where sufficient data were collected to enable the meteors' real heights and 

 the lengths, directions, and velocities of their real courses to be ascertained. 

 For such determinations more or less complete materials were afforded by 

 the meteors of July 25th, August 11th, 13th, 15th, September 24th, and 

 November 8th, 1876, and January 7th, March 17th, and April 6th, 1877, 

 permitting the heights, the radiant-points, and in some cases the velocities of 

 these meteors to be assigned. Notwithstanding very conflicting statements 

 which even professedly exact descriptions of these meteors' paths contain, an 

 impartial discussion of all the observations allows of their combination and 

 comparison together, so as to produce the most accordant representations of the 

 real courses along which these meteors passed over England or the adjacent 

 coasts. A table in the first Appendix contains the most reliable of these 

 deductions ; and sufficiently distinct descriptions of the eight fine meteors 

 which it records were secured by observations to make the real paths here 

 assigned to them free from any greater uncertainties than those which 

 naturally attach to and interfere with exact vision and perfectly correct 

 descriptions of such unexpected and startling celestial phenomena. The light 

 emitted by the large fireball of September 24th, 1876, was unusually vivid 

 and intense, and many remarkable instances of deception as to the real 

 direction and nature of its source, as well as in the views of tho fireball's 

 appearance as modified by clouds and otherwise, occurred among the de- 

 scriptions, some instances of which are cited in the general account given of 

 this meteor in the first Appendix. The same Appendix also contains a list 

 of ordinary shooting-stars doubly observed in England during the past year, 

 a huge proportion of which accordances were obtained from a comparison of 

 the meteor-register kept by Mr. Denning at Bristol with the published list 

 of meteors f.cen and recorded by Professor Main's assistants in the Eadeliffe 



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