392 Probable Connection of Comets with Shooting Stars. 



it some time anterior to its well-known division in 1845-6 ; and 

 if this afterwards took place to a still greater extent from the 

 feebleness of coherence of that comet, its almost complete 

 dispersion, and therefore its ceasing to be visible after 1852, 

 wonld be accounted for. 



D' Arrest particularizes the following dates of the December 

 showers : — 



1741, Dec. 5. 



1798, Dec. 6. — Brandes gives the number of shooting stars 

 observed at Bremen at 2,000. 



1830, Dec. 7. — Raillard reports an ""extraordinary apparition 

 of shooting stars/'' — Comptes Rendus, vii., p. 177. 



1838, Dec. 6. — Flaugergues, at Toulon, saw many meteors 

 " from a point situated at the zenith at nine o'clock in the 

 evening." 



1838, Dec. 7. — Edward Herrick, at New-Haven (America), 

 " from a point of the sky situated near the chair of Cas- 

 siopeia." 



In other years, Colla, Heis, and Quetelet observed many 

 shooting stars on the same nights. According to Flaugergues 

 the radiant-point lies in about R.A. 30°, declination 43 north. 

 Herrick would give a somewhat less right ascension and greater 

 declination ; Heis a less right ascension, and less declination ; 

 but, at any rate, the December phenomenon differs from those 

 of August and November in this respect, that the meteors 

 appear, at a place in the parallel of central Europe, to proceed 

 from near the zenith. 



The corresponding longitude of the earth is about 75°, 

 nearly enough coinciding with the descending node of Biela's 

 comet, the longitude of which, between 1 772 and 1832, decreased 

 from 73° to 68° ; and it is well known that at this nodal pas- 

 sage the radius vector of the comet is about equal to the mean 

 distance of the earth from the sun. 



D'Arrest then calculated the place frcm which particles 

 moving in the orbit of Biela's comet must appear to radiate at 

 the rencontre with the earth at the nodal passage, and found it 

 to be about R.A. 25°, declination 51° north; so that, to 

 an observer in the parallel of Toulon or New-Haven, they would 

 appear to come from a point in the neighbourhood of the zenith 

 about nine o'clock in the evening of Dec. 5 — G. It is'there- 

 fore possible that they may become visible in the form of 

 the December shooting stars, though dArrest says that in his 

 mind the difficulties connected with the assumption are very 

 great. 



" Can it be," he asks, " that the celebrated shower of 

 meteors observed by F. Berthou, in Brazil, on the 11th of De- 

 cember, 1830, belongs to those here noticed V* An extraordi- 



