48 . .;. - REPORT — 1880. • 



slightly sloping path towards true north, at the not unusual height of fifty- 

 five to forty-five miles above the sea, midway between Harwich and 

 Ostend. It is, on the other hand, just as signally inconsistent with the 

 usual character of the swift, streak-leaiving August Perse'ids and Cassio- 

 peiads, as well as with the great height of expansion and disappearance 

 over a point of the North Sea in the neighbourhood of Holland. Accord- 

 ingly, although the meteor's course Avas mapped at both of the observers' 

 stations so far from its southern radiant-point, yet from the precise 

 character of the two descriptions, and their nearness to the point of 

 convergence of the tracks, we may still regard the concluded radiant- 

 point as very reliably established. It was on the ecliptic near the middle 

 of the last sign but one before the vernal equinox, between Aquarius and 

 Capricornus. 



^ The direction of flight from altitude 24°, azimuth W. from S. 221°, 

 noted in a description in the Report of the year 1864, accompanying the 

 description just discussed, of the real path of another August meteor of 

 the same date simultaneously observed at the Royal Observatory, Green- 

 wich, and Hawkhurst, disagrees with the rest of the description of the 

 path, to which a radiant-point at altitude 39°, azimuth 226° would cor- 

 respond. The radiant-point directly given by projections of the recorded 

 apparent tracks, is 28° + 68°,"near x Persei, corresponding to altitude 

 45°, azimuth 228°, showing that the altitude, at least, of the slope of path 

 in the table of that shooting-star's reduction, has been accidentally mis- 

 represented.- The radiant near ^ Persei given dii-ectly by the recorded 

 tracks is that which has been adopted in the present list. 

 1 •• No. 39.^-See the remarks on the corrections in the list, below, of the 

 volume for 1879 of these Reports, pp. 108 and 120, for a new observa- 

 tion and reduction of this meteor's real track. 



Rectifications of Errata, and of some false conclusions contained in the 

 Reports on Meteor Observations for the years 1878 and 1879. — The following 

 recapitulation of some errata and defects occurring in different portions 

 of the last two years' Reports are arranged with reference to the lines 

 and pages of the respective volumes of these Reports where they will be 

 found, for greater ease and simplicity of their discoveiy and correction. 

 Remarks on the corrections which they require are given in accompany- 

 ing notes when the nature or magnitude of the emendations are such as 

 to call for explanations and elucidation. 



. - On account of the existence of several such material oversights, arising 

 from the length of the Reports, and from lack of opportunities, which the 

 Committee has had to regret during the last two years, for full and careful 

 .summaries of meteor records and descriptions, it is found necessary to 

 condense the comments on these erasures as much as possible. Such 

 rectifications of them, accordingly, as have already been published else- 

 vvhere are referred to occasionally in the notes, for further particulars of 

 the expositions and reconsiderations which they have received. Sufficient 

 revisions of the several imperfections are only intended to be here afforded 

 to render the substance of the last two years' Reports as free from con- 

 temporaneous faults and misconstructions at the time when they were 

 pi'esented, as these Reports have generally been in former years. 



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