358 On Meteoric Showers in August. 
in any wise attentive to them, being engaged in conversation. "Their coufsé of 
track was from the N. N. KE. to 8. S. W., and of various degrees of brilliancy,— 
some of them very large and splendid. No watch was kept for them, and no par- 
ticular attention paid to them, and we soon retired into the interior of the house. 
The air was uncommonly transparent and the moonlight bright.” 
(9.) The display of shooting stars described in the following ex- 
tract, must have been one of uncommon numbers, and although the 
time does not correspond with the other dates within a week, yet 
the case deserves to be copied in this connection. If the times of 
the occurrence of the meteoric showers have gradually changed 
within six hundred years, it is highly important that we should 
know it. The quotation is from Matthet Paris Historia Major, 
etc. Ed. W. Wats, S. T. D. fol. Lond. 1640. p. 602. 
A. D. 1243. ‘‘Et eodem anno, videlicet septimo Calend. Augusti, fuit nox se- 
renissima, aérque purissimus, ita quod Lactea, sicut solet placidissima nocte hye- 
mali contingere, manifesté apparebat, Luna existente octava. Et ecce stelle 
cadere de ceelo videbantur, velociter sese jaculantes hac et illac. * * * In 
uno instanti, preter solitum, triginta vel quadraginta saltitare vel cadere vide- 
rentur, ita scilicet, quod due vel tres simul uno tramite, volare se mentirentur. 
Unde, si vere stelle fuissent, (quod nullius sapientis est sentire) nec una in celo 
remansisset. Considerent Astrologi, quid hujusmodi portentum significet: sed 
omnibus intuentibus, videbatur nimis stupendum et prodigiosum.” 
This date is the 26th of July of the Julian style, and conse- 
quently about the 2d of August of our present calendar.* 
(10.) Observations on shooting stars have of late engaged the 
attention of persons in various parts of Europe. The September 
No. (1837) of the Lond. and Edin. Philos. Magazine, which has 
recently arrived, contains three articles on this subject ;—one by M. 
Wartmann, of Geneva, and two by M. Quetelet, of Brussels. The 
following quotations from the latter show that the author suspects a 
“meteoric shower in August. 
“M. Sauveur stated that being on the road from Brussels to Liége, in the night 
of the 8th of last August (1836) he observed a considerable aniaine of shooting 
stars, of which Cee aiime re remarkable for their size and brilliancy. M. Que- 
telet suggests that this epoch presents a singular agreement with that of the 10th 
4 
-* There are on record several other well-marked instances of ancient star- 
showers, some of which it may be difficult to reconcile with the periodic times of 
the present day. If their dates are truly given, these displays have happened, at 
various times between A. D. 764 and 1243, in the months of March, April, Oeto- 
ber and December. There seems however good reason to suppose that the me- 
teoric showers of antiquity did in fact occur at times of year somewhat removed 
from the present periods. A statement of these instances, with an inquiry inte 
this change of period, may be expected in the next volume of this Journal. 
