336 eepoet— 1878. 



enough to record its track exactly. The recorded paths of forty or fifty 

 Perse'ids laid down in a map gave the radiant- point of the shower most 

 accordantly at 43° + 56°. Another means of ascertaining it was also 

 adopted by prolonging the short tracks of several meteors seenjand mapped 

 near the radiant-point at about l h a.m. backwards, with the resulting 

 position, 45° + 57° ; and a perfectly stationary meteor was seen at 47° 

 + 58°. The precision of the meteors' radiation from the general radiant- 

 point was surprising, much more so than on August 10th, 1877, when the 

 radiant region was diffuse with a general centre at 47° + 62°. The appa- 

 rent shifting of the radiant-point, then observed, to a more accurate one 

 at 58° + 56° on August 11th, could not be verified in the present year, as 

 on that date the sky was quite overcast. Both at Writtie and at Bristol 

 many meteors were seen on the nights of August 7th and 8th, including 

 several Perse'ids and some Cassiopeiads. Prom the Perse'ids seen on the 

 7th Mr. Denning found a position of the radiant-point at 42° + 57°, and 

 Mr. Corder one at 43° + 55°. 



Although not remarkably intense, the radiation of the August Perse'ids, 

 in the year 1878, yet seems from all these descriptions to have been 

 unusually exact. 



Catalogues of meteor-shoivers, and Directions to Observers of Luminous 

 Meteors. — The example first set by Heis of observing the general centres 

 of radiation of shooting-stars on ordinary nights of the year has borne 

 abundant fruit during a long period of more than thirty years ; but at the 

 same time never more rapidly, perhaps, than during the last two or three. 



Towards the end of last year was published, as the conclusion of his 

 own labours in this field of observation and reduction, a full and perfect 

 compilation, recently projected and finally completed by the late Professor 

 Heis, of the results of his original or otherwise recorded observations, 

 and of the calculations and determinations founded upon them, accom- 

 panied by comparisons with the work of other professional observers 

 with whom he continued to be in constant communication on this and 

 other subjects of his long-continued investigations until the last days of 

 his life. The work was issued, a few months after his decease, to the 

 astronomical public, as one of the ordinary publications * of the Royal 

 Observatory of Minister, under the joint editorship of his daughters and 

 the supervision of one of the great astronomer's thoroughly accomplished 

 pupils. Of this work the Committee received, in pursuance of a previous 

 arrangement with Professor Heis, a communication of fifty copies from 

 the Miinster University librarians, by the directions of the late Professor 

 Heis' daughters ; and with the assistance of their recommendations the 

 greater part of these copies were distributed, towards the close of last 

 year, to a number of British and foreign observers and leading observa- 

 tories, selected as having been his most active co-operators in the observa- 

 tion of meteors, and in the collection and discussion of phenomena 

 relating to the astronomical theory of shooting-stars. 



The work comprises, in 180 quarto pages, here and there illustrated 

 with woodcuts, the apparent paths and brief descriptions of about 13,000 

 shooting-stars observed under Professor Heis' own directions at Aix-la- 

 Chapelle and Miinster, and of about 3000 meteors seen elsewhere in Ger- 

 many, and in other countries. Of this latter number the author's wide cor- 



* Vol. ii., 1877 : — (as was noticed in the last volume of these Reports, for 1877, 

 p. 101.) 



