METEORS OF AUGUST AND NOVEMBER. 139 



of remark, however, that by proceeding from the values of Table VI. for the 

 November meteors, and making y, X, and /? vary within limits assigned to 

 their probable errors by Professor Twining, while the general character of i 

 and a remains the same, that is to say, retrograde or highly inclined, and infe- 

 rior, the value of ^ may approach nearly to 90°, and the perihelion distance, 



-^ , may approach the value of the sun's semi-diameter, or sin (16' 1".) 

 1 + e 



This will readily be inferred from the largeness of the negative coefficient 

 of d y in the last equation of (29) . This circumstance gives to the remark- 

 able serpentine meteor of the great November display, as has been already 

 stated, the character of an emanation from the sun's atmosphere. How far 

 such a conclusion, founded on this single result, may be considered as 

 plausible, must be left to others to decide. I will merely remark, that if the 

 position of the convergent point had been such as to give this value of ^, with 

 % small, and a consequent motion direct, this circumstance would be somewhat 

 confirmatory of the nebular hypothesis of Laplace; since, if one class of small 

 asteroids may with reason be supposed to have had their origin in the sun's 

 atmosphere, analogy may authorize us to suppose a similar origin for the pro- 

 jectile motion of the larger asteroids and planets, in the gradual condensation 

 of the nebulous portions of matter composing the system, the motion of rota- 

 tion being converted into an orbital motion. The analogy fails, however, on 

 account of the high inclination of the orbit of the meteor derived from the 

 same data. 



NOTE. 



In Section I. of this paper I made mention of the observations of Professor Locke, published in 1834, in 

 the " Cincinnati Daily Gazette." Those of the 8th and 10th of August, 1834, published on the 11th 

 and 12th of August in the same year, are worthy of being reprinted from the files of that paper, as they 

 show that, although the periodicity of the August meteors was first discovered by Quetelet in 1836, the 

 position of their radiant and convergent points was first discovered, and pointed out with precision by an 

 American, in 1834, as had been done the previous autumn by Professor Olmsted and others for the No- 

 vember meteors. 



Cincinnati Daily Gazette, August Wih, ]834. 



"METEORS. 

 " Mr. Editor, 



" On the evening of August 8th I observed, in the course of two hours, thirty meteors or ' shooting stars.' 



As I could not have in view more than one-fourth of the visible heavens at once, there were probably one 



hundred and twenty meteors to be seen in that time. I do not mention this as any thing uncommon, but 



