26 
THE METEORIC SHOWER OF NOVEMBER, 1866. 
[Nature and Art, January 1, 1867. 
cycle, is because the cloud or group of particles is 
so large, that after we have pierced it in one place 
one year, it has not got completely out of our 
course by the next year, and so we meet it again 
and pierce it in another place : it does not get 
out of our way in the eleven days’ grace we 
give it. 
We, then, dash into the midst of this crowd at the 
rate of 18 miles a second, and its member’s fly on 
all sides around us with a flight of the same speed. 
The reader will now be prepared to understand 
why all the meteors in any particular shower seem 
to stream from one point of the heavens — the 
“radiant point,” as it is termed. It is because this 
point is the part of space towards which the earth 
in its orbital course is moving • and the meteors 
appear to come from it, just as, if we were walking 
through an avenue of trees, the individual trees 
would appear to be coming from the end of the 
aven ue • or as, if we were running through a crowd, 
all the people composing it would seem to be 
coming from the direction of the spot to which we 
were going. The “ earth’s way,” as the direction 
of the earth’s motion is termed, at the time of the 
November displays is in a line with a star in the 
constellation Leo , and hence all the meteors on 
these occasions seem to radiate from that star. 
It is time we said a few words upon the par- 
ticular shower which has called forth this article ; 
but there is little to be added to what we have 
already written, save in the way of mere descrip- 
tion. Those who had the good fortune to observe 
the shower will not want a detailed account of the 
appearance the meteors presented ; and as those 
who did not witness it can gain a far better notion 
of their appearance from an illustration than from 
any word picture we can paint, we have pre- 
pared a chromo-litliograph in which we have 
depicted, as truthfully as possible, the asjaect of a 
region of the sky — the north-west — at an instant 
when the meteors were at the thickest of their 
flight, which was at about a quarter-past one in the 
morning of the 14th. A more “sensational” 
picture might have been produced by the insertion 
of a larger number of meteors ; but this would have 
entailed a sacrifice of truthfulness, for not more 
meteors than we have shown were at any one 
instant visible in any area of the sky equal to that 
included in our illustration, although quite as many 
as we have included actually were seen. Of course 
it is impossible to reproduce by any art-process 
the glowing brilliancy of a luminous body, like the 
bright nucleus of a meteor ; the soft radiance of the 
trains of the meteors, also, shining with their 
greenish-blue light, can scarcely be adequately 
represented in a drawing. 
It was a rare coincidence that in the cloudy 
month of November, a clear night should happen 
on the occasion of an event that occurs once only 
in 33 years. The previous night was hopelessly 
cloudy ; had the shower occurred then, as was 
partly anticipated, it would have passed unseen — in 
England, at all events. The morning of the 13th 
also gave little hopes ; it was only as the after- 
noon wore on that the clouds broke up and dis- 
persed, and the chances of seeing the display bore 
a favourable aspect. The evening, with a few 
exceptional intervals of cloud, was superbly clear ; 
but during the early hours, there was little to 
indicate the advent of the spectacle that the later 
hours were to bring with them. From nine to 
eleven o’clock only 25 meteors were noted : not 
more than would be seen on any ordinary 
November night. But when, at about the latter 
hour, the constellation Leo, the throne of the 
radiant point, came above the horizon, it was 
evident that a celestial sight of no ordinary cha- 
racter was to be expected. First, at the rate of 
about one a minute, afterwards at the rate of four 
or five, the fiery shafts silently flew forth in all 
directions from their common point of departure j 
now horizontally and straight as Euclid’s line, now 
vertically upwards like an earthly rocket, now down- 
wards in a graceful circular curve. Thus, between 
eleven and twelve o’clock, 1 68 meteors appeared ; 
blit it was not until after midnight that the display 
commenced in earnest. The average number of 
meteors per minute up to that time did not exceed 
three ; but by half-past twelve this average rose to 
70, or more than one a second. Then there was 
a lull for a few minutes, and after that, the num- 
bers steadily increased, till the average stood at 
118. Then clouds came on and threatened to put 
an end to the scene ; but they cleared off' after a 
few minutes, and at about a quarter-past one the 
maximum of the shower was reached : the average 
at that time being 122 meteors per minute.* 
Whether a greater average occurred during the 
slight interval of cloud, it is of course impossible 
to say. From this time the numbers rapidly 
declined, till, after a few short spurts of greater 
numbers, the average fell to 70 per minute at 
half-past one, 50 per minute at a quarter to two, 
and 20 per minute at two o’clock. At half-past trvo 
again a slight spurt increased the average for a 
minute or two, and at three o’clock it stood at 10. 
Still it decreased until between four and five a.m., 
when only 40 meteors in all Avere counted. 
The Avliole number registered at Greenwich 
throughout the entire display, amounted to 8,485. 
Allowing for the cloudy moments, we may say that 
the total number of meteors passing over the sky 
of Green Avich, from nine p.m. on the 13th to five 
a.m. on the 14th, Avas about 10,000. No av from 
this it is evident that, grand as Avas the pheno- 
menon, it must have been very far short of the 
sublimity of previous shoAvers. Admitting the 
possibility of exaggeration in some of the ancient 
accounts, such as that of the shoAver of 1366, in 
which we are told “ that the sky and air seemed to 
be in flames, and even the earth appeared as if 
* The numbers we give are those determined at the Royal 
Observatory, Greenwich, where every care was taken by an 
organised system of observation, in which nearly a dozen 
observers Avere employed, to secure as accurate a record as 
possible of the various phases of the shower, and of all data 
it might afford. The hours we have cited refer to Green- 
wich mean time. 
