132 report — 1877. 



APPENDIX. 

 I. Meteors Doubly Observed. 



In the list of observations of large meteors presented last year, several de- 

 scriptions are contained which more or less certainly and correctly describe 

 the same meteor seen at different places. But the observations are not 

 always very perfectly compatible with each other. The following are the 

 principal conclusions which, as far as the data would permit, it has been 

 found possible to obtain from them*. Some of the observations referred to 

 are described in the list of observations of large meteors annexed to this 

 Report, especially of the three last meteors mentioned in the present Table, 

 which were seen after August 1876, and whose real paths have been de- 

 termined from the accounts of them which are now about to be recorded 

 (see, for the Table, pp. 134, 13-5.) 



Notes on the Results of the Comparisons presented in the Table. 



1876, July 25, 10 h 3 m p.m. — The descriptions giving accurate particulars 

 of this meteor's apparent course (at Poplar and Edgeware Road, London, 

 Brighton, Downham, Hersham, Street, and Burnham, Somersetshire) are 

 seven in number ; but three of them exhibit anomalies of the meteor's track 

 among the constellations which put them out of useful reference for calcula- 

 tion. The meteor's long path appears to have been traced backwards after 

 its disappearance by a natural tendency of the eye to wander round the sky 

 at a constant altitude in prolonging a great circle to constellations much 

 above those from which it was directed. An account received from Burnham, 

 in Somersetshire, by Mr. Cordcr, states that the meteor passed from Ophiu- 

 chus through Bootes on a line directed from the constellation Pegasus, a 

 line which cannot be a great circle on the globe. The meteor's course, de- 

 scribed at Brighton as being remarkable for its apparent length, is still more 

 extraordinary by the unnatural deflection at the middle of its track, by which 

 it proceeded thence on a course about 45° inclined to its original direction. 

 As far as can be gathered from the only thoroughly consistent accounts of 

 its apparent course recorded (a correction of " north " to " south " declina- 

 tion in that at Downham, Norfolk, includes this latter among the most pre- 

 cise of the descriptions), the particular account of the meteor's course through 

 the constellations " Aquila and Hercules to Arcturus" at Edgeware Road, Lon- 

 don, while not self-contradictory like the above, appears yet to be affected 

 with the same source of error ; and it is the only account so signally in con- 

 trast with the remaining well-recorded ones as to make the possibility of two 

 meteors having been visible, either appearing nearly at the same time or to- 

 gether, a question which could be reasonably offered for consideration. The 

 calculated path presented in the Table is derived from the observations at 

 Street (Somersetshire) and Poplar, with the corroborative evidence shown at 

 Hersham (Surrey) and at Downham (Norfolk, assuming the above small but 

 important correction of the point of origin) of its approximate exactness. That 

 the meteor proceeded from a very low southern radiant- point is pretty clearly 

 proved by these accounts ; but it is unfortunate that the other circumstan- 

 tially detailed descriptions of its apparent course point apparently to an origin 

 of the meteor's flight far north of the equator, and accordingly (if they could 



[* 'Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society,' vol. xxxvii.pp. 208-210, with some 

 amplifications in the present columns of the Table.] 



