OBSEEVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEOBS. 121 



has been adopted in the table. The uncertainty of the meteor's real height 

 and distance scarcely allows its real velocity ( 75 miles in 2 or 41 seconds) 

 to be very confidently derived from the observed durations. The para- 

 bolic speed for the adopted radiant-point is 25 miles per second. 



1877, October 8-9, midnight. Fireball in Holland. — Two observations 

 of this fireball besides that mapped by Mr. Denning (these Reports, vol. 

 for 1878, p. 282) were obtained, at Antwerp, and near Mezieres, on the 

 French frontier of Belgium. Although of the vaguest description, they 

 yet confirm each other and support Mr. Denning's conjecture of the 

 meteor's radiant point. Adopting this as quite certainly established, the 

 meteor's real path may be pretty surely determined from the rough account 

 of its apparent course at Antwerp. It appears to have been from 80 miles 

 above a point of the German Ocean 15 miles due west of Allemaar to 35 

 miles above the sea 60 miles due west of the same town in Holland. The 

 real length of path, 63 miles, performed in four seconds, gives a velocity 

 relative to the earth of nearly 16 miles per second. The parabolic speed 

 for the meteor's adopted radiant-points at 77° + 34° is 40 - 5 miles per 

 second. 



1877, October 14, 6 h 15-20 m and 6 h 55 m p.m. (Paris time). A very 

 brilliant fireball (? two distinct ones) over Rouen and the mouth of the 

 Seine, France. — No time of appearance was recorded by one observer, 

 Mons. Martin, in Paris, who described the fireball as proceeding 'from 

 near Ursa Major towards the left,' and as this is opposed to another de- 

 scription in Paris, that it fell almost vertically, a little inclined from left 

 to right, and is only imperfectly corroborated by a third statement there, 

 that the nearly vertical descent (in the west) was ' a little inclined from 

 N.W. towards S.E.' (? S.W.), it is just possible that two other observa- 

 tions near Rouen, and at Neuilly Enthelle, in Oise, which give the time 

 of appearance 6 h 20 m and 6 h 15 m , instead of 6 h 55 m , may relate to another 

 perfectly similar and very similarly situated meteor to the later one, of 

 which this discordant account in Paris may have been an additional 

 description. But the celestial positions of the later meteor's path at ' 7 

 p.m.,' given by the observer in the Department of La Manche (which were 

 indeed only gathered from descriptions), are also quite irreconcileable 

 with the delineation of the meteor's course by the stars at Clermont 

 Ferrand, although in conjunction with all the other statements they also 

 agree in defining the radiant point's position as very near the zenith. 

 The whole of the very conflicting particulars of the recorded paths and 

 times of appearance of the meteor may therefore perhaps relate really to 

 the descent of only a single great fireball near the mouth of the Seine a 

 few minutes before 7 o'clock (Paris time) on the evening of October 8. 

 The stars between Cygnus and Cepheus were in the zenith at that hour, 

 and the meteor was without doubt directed from one of the northernmost 

 of the Lacertid group of radiants in Lacerta and Cepheus, which are 

 thickly clustered in and about the latter constellation in October. No 

 sound of a detonation appears to have been distinguished, although the 

 fireball burst ' like a bombshell ' at the end of its course into many 

 brilliant pieces ; and it left a streak visible for a few seconds only on its 

 course. 



