The November Shooting Stars. 457 



and merely tell mj own story of what I saw, copied from a 

 narrative which I wrote on that morning before daybreak.* 

 It will be seen how conspicuous was the fact of the meteors 

 radiating from a point in Leo — a circumstance of which I had 

 doubtless read in books, but had little or no recollection of it. 



On the evening of the 13th, at eleven o' clock, I looked 

 out from my house at Seapoint, near Dublin, to see whether 

 anything unusual were occurring, and observed that all was 

 still — Mars glowing near Castor and Pollux; Sirius calmly 

 accompanying Orion. " Good night to the stars," thought I ; 

 but it was not to be so. At a few minutes after twelve, 

 Dublin time (say 12'30, Greenwich time), I was called up with 

 the information that the shooting stars were chasing each other 

 with wonderful rapidity. I hastened to look at them, and the 

 first idea suggested was indeed that of an exhibition of fire- 

 works, but how much more beautiful they were ! Their oc- 

 currence was almost incessant. From 12*40 to T30, and 

 later, t it would have been difficult to find a moment in which 

 none were visible in some part or other of the sky. Some- 

 times three or four fine ones could be seen at once. 



There was a marked difference in their appearance as seen 

 from a window facing the east, and from a bow window com- 

 manding a view of the north, west, and south; and I set 

 myself to find out in what this difference consisted. I first 

 viewed them attentively from the bow window ; the shooting 

 stars invariably moved downwards there. Each commenced 

 with an outburst of brilliant white light, like one of the many 

 stars of a rocket ; and this bright star travelled a second or 

 two, and then disappeared, not very rapidly, but remaining 

 visible four or five seconds as a beautiful spindle-shaped track 

 of white light, the general straightness of its form being very 

 remarkable. These spindles tended almost perpendicularly 

 downward in the west, downward from left to right in the 

 south, and downward from right to left in the north. Some- 

 times a wonderfully bright star appeared, with a long, thread- 

 like track of extraordinary length, nearly from the zenith to 

 the horizon. The stars, or nuclei, of these meteors were gene- 

 rally white, but occasionally one appeared blue, or red, or 

 bright yellow. My impression is, that in these cases the train or 

 track of light was sometimes of a different colour from the star. 



The shooting-stars in the east were in general smaller than 

 those observed in the north, south, and west ; but they soon 

 riveted my attention even more than the others had done. 



* Mr. Slack's spirited account of the display is already in the hands of my 

 readers. See No. for last month. [The reader i8 requested to correct the date in 

 Mr. Slack's paper to 13-14th. Ed.] 



t Greenwich time, which will be henceforth used in this description. 



