338 report — 1878. 



abridgment for the whole year, and of a preliminary list for the first 

 half-year in full, see the volumes of these reports for 1870, p. 98, and 

 1871, p. 46) no entire abstract for useful reference has hitherto appeared 

 in these reports. A series of instructions to observers for recording me- 

 teors and meteorites, drawn up at the request of the Committee by Dr. 

 W. Flight and Professor Herschel, to furnish both regular and occasional 

 observers of meteors of every kind with suitable directions as to the pro- 

 per means and methods of recording them, and for preserving useful 

 particulars of their various phenomena, is added to these lists with a 

 view of facilitating their consultation and perusal by those who may 

 fortunately be observers of star-showers, or who may be desirous of trac- 

 ing the directions of large meteors from some of the many active radiant- 

 points with which the sky is found to be more or less thickly strewn at all 

 the ordinary hours and seasons of the year. 



Important lists, both of his own observations of such showers through- 

 out the year 1877, and of similar showers for the whole year found by 

 searches and projections of the meteor-tracks in the Italian Meteor Asso- 

 ciation catalogue of shooting-stars for the year 1872, were published during 

 the past year by Mr. Denning.* The first of these is a continuation of 

 his two earlier lists of twenty-seven, and of fifty-two meteor-showers for 

 the four years ending in March, 1876, and for April-December, 1870, 

 published in the ' Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,' 

 vol. xxxvi. pp. 283-285, and vol. xxxvii. pp. 105-115f ; and it includes new 

 positions and notes of the appearances of 162 meteor-showers deduced 

 from the paths of 1,929 shooting- stars registered by himself, chiefly in 

 the last half of the year 1877. Descriptions of the majority of the most 

 conspicuous of these showers, showing especially the dates of their 

 maximum abundance, arc given in the accompanying list of ' Remarkable 

 meteor-showers in the years 1877-78.' The second list contains the posi- 

 tions of 315 radiant-points deduced by systematic projections of about 

 4,000 of the 7,500 meteor-paths (omitting about 3,500 tracks observed on 

 August 3rd-14th) recorded by the Italian Meteor Association in the year 

 1872. This first catalogue of the Italian Association's observations 

 falls naturally into thirteen periods separated by void intervals owing to 

 the brightness of full moonlight ; and grouping two of these into one 

 (February-March, and November-December) in two cases where the 

 showers were little distinguishable from each other, Mr. Denning de- 



* ' Monthly Notices ' of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxxviii. p. 303 (for 

 the declinations of the last three showers on the page, + 1,1,2, read + 15, 19, 22) : 

 and Ibid., p. 315 ; March, 1878. 



■f The Table of fifty-two radiant -points observed and engrossed together in a list by 

 Mr. Denning, at p. 170 of the volume of these Reports for 1877, is a partial com- 

 bination of the two above lists extending as far as October, 1870. It was com- 

 municated (in the form in which it is there presented) to the ' Astronomische 

 Nachrichten,' towards the end of the year 187C, as was noted at p. 162 of the last 

 volume of these Reports. But in the above English publications of Mr. Denning's 

 earlier lists, the first (of April 1870, twenty-seven radiants) extends to March, 1870 ; 

 and the second (of fifty-two radiants, January, 1877), from April to December, 1876. 

 They are referred to in the accompanying ' List of Remarkable .Star-showers, ' as D., 

 or D. (71-6), and D. (76), while the combined list of last year's Report will be desig- 

 nated (if again referred to) DN, or DN (76) ; and that of 162 showers, observed in 

 the year 1877 (published, as above notified, by Mr. Denning in the present year,) is 

 denoted by D (77) ; Mr. Denning's Table of Reductions of the Italian Catalogue of 

 1872 (published at the same time) by DS. 



