THE LOST COMET AND ITS METEOE-TKAIN. 
Br KICHAED A. PEOCTOR, B.A. (Cambkidge). 
Honorary Secretary of the Eoyal Astronomical Society ; Author 
OF Other Worlds than Ours/’ The Sun/’ &c. 
T he meteor-shower which occurred on November 27 last, and 
the circumstances connected with that event, have not only 
attracted a fresh interest to the subject of meteoric astronomy, 
hut have afforded important evidence respecting the connection 
which undoubtedly exists between meteors and comets. I pro- 
pose in this paper to consider more particularly the events 
referred to ; for, although I have not hitherto in these pages 
dealt with the progress of cometic and meteoric astronomy, 
yet it is known to the majority of my readers that elsewhere 
this subject has been somewhat fully discussed by me. 
It has been shown by the labours of Schiaparelli, Adams, 
Peters, Tempel, and other astronomers, that the meteors of 
November 13-14 (called the Leonides) travel in the track of 
Tempel’s comet. The meteors of August 10-11, or Perseides, 
have also been shown to travel in the track of a comet. Other 
such instances of association have been more or less fully recog- 
nised ; and now the conclusion has been generally accepted, that 
in the train or path of comets bodies travel in scattered flights, 
which, if they fall on the atmosphere of the earth, appear as 
shooting-stars or meteors. 
Until the recent shower, however, the inquiries made in this 
branch of research has been limited to cases of recognised 
meteor-systems whose orbits have been found to agree with 
those of comets. It was a new circumstance in the history of 
meteoric research when Weiss in Germany, and Alexander 
Herschel in England, ventured to predict a meteoric display 
because the earth was about to pass through the orbit of a 
known comet. It is true that there were some reasons for 
believing that meteors which had fallen in various years between 
November 25 and December 7 were attendants upon the comet in 
question — Biela’s or Gambart’s. But the evidence was slight, 
and in some respects unsatisfactory ; so that it may be said that 
