78 report— 1879. 



rough apparent end-point of the meteor's path at Clermont Ferrand, in 

 France, combined with observations of its course at Zurich, and at 

 several other Swiss places, a terminal height of its flight, 102 miles 

 over Chatillon sur Loire, a position which is to the east of Tours, but 

 perhaps nearly the real height at which the meteor's disappearance 

 actually took place. 



Professor voh. Niessl has discussed a collection of well-recorded 

 accounts of the meteor, including those used by Tissot and "Weilermann 

 and two described in these Reports (sup. cit.) at Puy de Sancy and 

 Geneva, and newspaper accounts, with less precise descriptions, preserved 

 in Continental journals. 



As seen at the Zurich Observatory, and also at a neighbouring place 

 in Switzerland, the fireball shot overhead, or a little south of the zenith, 

 from close to Jupiter near the east horizon, to near Arcturus in the west. 

 At Geneva and Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, it shot on a similar 

 course close past the star ?/ Ursee Majoris, half-way thence to the W.N.W. 

 horizon. French accounts state that at places in Cote d'Or, and near 

 Tours, it passed overhead in the latter part of its flight ; and that it 

 was first seen at Tremont (Saone et Loire) rising upwards in the same 

 field of view with the planet Jupiter, in a telescope. At Puy de Sancy 

 the end of its course was exactly at /3 Ursa? Majoris. At Mayence, in 

 Germany, it traversed the head of Capricornus, the Milky Way, and 

 Ophiuchus to near the S.W. horizon under a Serpentis. Its course as 

 seen at Bergamo, in Italy, by Zezioli, was from 17° + 3° (5° or 6° left of 

 Jupiter) to a point between Coma and Arcturus at 202° + 27°, the 

 duration of its flight, as there observed, along this long path, being 17 

 seconds. These were all the positions noted by the stars exactly 

 enough to be available for calculation. 



The observations of the end-point give a height of 115 miles (imper- 

 fectly defined between 70 and 140 miles) over a point very clearly 

 indicated near Vendome, about 30 miles N.N.E. from Tours. Using the 

 point so found to complete the Mayence observation, and projecting that 

 and the other apparent paths by their most carefully recorded points, 

 Professor von Niessl found as a well-defined place of the radiant-point a 

 position at 13°'9— 2°, about 6° south of Jupiter's apparent place. 



The fact that several views of the meteor's first visibility in France, 

 Switzerland, and Italy all describe it as having first made its appearance 

 very close to the planet Jupiter, plainly indicates a very long course of 

 the meteor's flight before it approached the region of the Alps. Upon a 

 map the course passes backwards about 20 miles north of Belgrade 

 towards the south coast of the Black Sea, and at a point 460 miles above 

 a point near this latter coast, a little west of Sinope, the lines of sight of 

 the meteor's first appearance at Zurich, Morges, and Bergamo intersect 

 each other. But the parallax which even the base-line of Zurich and 

 Bergamo (two places 130 English miles apart) offer of this point, is 

 scarcely more than 5°. To assume it to be truly the exact place of the 

 meteor's first appearance, would, it might certainly be contended, be 

 reposing too much confidence in observers' first impressions of the earliest 

 point of this long-flighted and rarely splendid meteor's apparition, in a 

 part of its course too, where their descriptions, if accurate, should 

 necessai'ily have represented the meteor as appearing to them to remain 

 nearly stationary for several seconds. 



If, with M. Tissot, we suppose the meteor to have first made its 



