lat. 53° 57', W. long. 2° 6'). The point of disappearance agrees within two or three degrees with the place of disappearance observed by Miss Reade, and measured by Mr. J. B. Reade, at Bishopsbourne in Kent; and the entire course equally exactly represents the apparent elevation (at altitude 30°, due north) as seen at Calne, in Wilts. At these latter places its motion would appear almost vertically downwards, as it was observed at Llandudno and in London. The radiant-point of its approximate course is at R. A. 300°, N. Decl. 14°, near a Aquila, where no well-established radiant-point of ordinary shooting-stars has hitherto been detected at that season of the year.

The writer of an extremely interesting article in the Daily News,' on the probable real path of the fireball, cites the description of its course by an observer at Sheffield as "apparently from north to south, radiating from the zenith." The place of first appearance was found to be (very nearly as above described) at a height of seventy-six miles over the neighbourhood of Sheffield. At the latter place, very near to the meteor's real course, the observer describes the meteor as having an irregular contour, and compares the apparent size of its surface to one-sixth of that of the moon. As both of the observations at York and Heighington differ from the Sheffield description in showing that the meteor moved towards the west and north, while the real course, concluded from the above observations, would appear at Sheffield radiating from the zenith towards the north-north-west, it is not impossible that the Sheffield observer, by a not uncommon inversion of the points of the compass, misrepresented the actual direction of the meteor's flight, which should have been described as apparently from south to north.

The meteor seen at Leeds, in twilight on some evening about the 25th of October last, was probably identical with this one, as it was so extremely brilliant as to attract the observer's attention while it was still overhead; and it "shot across the zenith towards the sun's place at the time," disappearing, "when a little past the zenith, in sparks and tails." This note of its appearance agrees perfectly well with the description of its apparent shape and magnitude at Sheffield, and it corroborates the observations at York and Heighington, that the meteor moved towards the west. The altitude of 52° in the west-north-west from Leeds, at which the point of extinction, as above determined, probably occurred, might very aptly be described by an observer, who first caught sight of the meteor when it was nearly overhead, as "going out when a little past the zenith."

1869, November 6th, about 6h 50m P.M., G. M. T., Cornwall, England, Wales, and Scotland. The great brightness of the fireball and of its persistent streak, which is described by Mr. Pengelly, of Torquay, as having remained in sight fully fifty minutes, rendered it a conspicuous object even beyond the vicinity of places where its luminous course was nearly through the zenith. A comparison of several published descriptions of the meteor, communicated to the British Meteorological Society by Mr. A. S. Herschel, places the point of first appearance of the nucleus ninety miles over Frome, in Somersetshire, the first point of the luminous streak at a height of fortyseven miles over Launceston, and its termination, at the extinction of the meteor, twenty-seven miles over the sea very near St. Ives in Cornwall. The whole length of its luminous course was 170 miles, performed in about five seconds, with a velocity of about thirty-four miles per second. The length of the bright streak, which gradually diffused itself in width and assumed a serpentine form, was fifty-four miles, and its greatest width, when it was first seen by Mr. Pengelly at Torquay, was about four miles (Proceedings of the Brit. Meteor. Soc. for June 1870, p. 144). In that paper the meteor's

course is stated to have descended at Broadstairs from 20 north of the zenith; the real direction of its line of flight was from about 2° south of

Path of the large fireball of November 6th, 1869. Height and position
of the bright streak, and of the meteor's track.

The track

the zenith, as it was there observed by Mr. James Chapman. prolonged backwards across the south of England must therefore have passed somewhat more perpendicularly over Kent, or about 10° more nearly from east to west than its real course is shown in the accompanying Map. The radiant-point, which Mr. Herschel states was at R. A. 62°, N. Decl. 37°, would on this account be at a point in smaller right ascension and in lower north declination than that given in the paper. It would thus be nearer to a point in R. A. 54°, N. Decl. 16° (near Aldebaran), from which twelve meteors out of twenty-one shooting-stars observed by Mr. Backhouse, at Sunderland, on the same evening diverged with remarkable uniformity; and four meteors

out of ten, observed on the night of the 4th of November, also appeared to radiate from the same point. The large fireball was accordingly an individual

Apparent places of the streak of light left by the large meteor of November 6th, 1869,

1. Penzance.

2. Redruth, Cornwall.

3. St. Helier's, Jersey.

4. Rothbury, Northumberland.

5. Scilly Isles.
6. Bristol.

7. Stokesay, Shropshire.
8. Hawkhurst, Kent.

9. Broadstairs.

10. Ramsgate.

11. Torquay.

of the conspicuous meteor-shower from Taurus, which attracted the attention of observers during the recent returns of the November star-shower, as appearing, although with greatly inferior brilliancy, simultaneously with the meteors of that great display. (See Appendix III., Meteor-showers in November, 1869.)

1869, November 14th, 4h 47m A.M., G. M. T., Glasgow and Culloden (Inverness-shire). A considerable fireball during the progress of the November shower attracted the attention of both of the observers, as being opposite in its motion to the general direction of the "Leonids." The meteor was seen due north from Glasgow, in the direction of Culloden (110 miles north from Glasgow), where the meteor passed across the zenith. The apparent parallax is 60°, and the meteor moved horizontally from the north-north-west at a height of sixty miles over the north coast of Inverness-shire, approaching 1870.

G

from the sea at Lossiemouth, and crossing over Inverness towards Kintail. The length of the part of the path observed at Glasgow was seventy-four miles, performed in four seconds of time, with a velocity of eighteen and a half miles per second. The direction of the meteor was from R. A. 12o, N. Decl. 14° in Pisces, very near the position (R. A. 12°, S. Decl. 2o) of a radiant-point T* of shooting-stars observed on the 27th of September, 1864+. Another meteor of the same group was doubly observed on the 24th of September, 1866; and its velocity was found to be, like that of the present fireball, less than the average velocity of shooting-stars, or about twenty-three miles per second. (Report for 1866, p. 124.)

1869, December 12th, 6h 13m 30 P.M., G. M. T., Glasgow, Hawick, and Oundle (Northamptonshire). Although the description of the meteor's course at the northern stations of Glasgow and Hawick are incomplete, yet on account of their great distance, about 270 miles from Oundle, near Peterborough, where the meteor's path was well recorded by the stars, a good approximation of the meteor's real path is obtained by assuming the wellknown position (about R. A. 100°, N. Decl. 35°) of the radiant-point in Gemini of the December meteors to be represented very nearly by the observations of the present meteor intersecting each other, when prolonged backwards at a point about R. A. 125°, N. Decl. 35°. The lowest stars of Ursa Major being less than 20° above the horizon at Oundle, the height of 18° or 20° at which the meteor there was estimated to have passed "below Ursa Major," is evidently overrated; and an altitude of 12° will, with the usual interpretation of estimated altitudes near the horizon, fairly represent the apparent altitude of the meteor's course. After making these preliminary assumptions with respect to the apparent directions of the meteor's flight, it appears, from their comparison together, that the fireball commenced its visible path at a height of 100 miles above Bergen in Norway, and shot with a straight course of about 400 miles, to about fifty miles over Edinburgh, where it disappeared. An observer of its luminous progress at Dundee states that it proceeded with a slow shooting motion, apparently as if forcing its way through the air for about thirty seconds; and the statement indicates the unusually long time occupied by the meteor in its transit across the North Sea. The description of its time of flight at Oundle, by Mr. William Rickett, was that the meteor continued its motion, with an apparent speed by no means rapid, for 15 or 20 seconds. Adopting Mr. Rickett's account as probably the most accurate, and employing his approximate value, or seventeen and a half seconds, for the meteor's time of flight, it follows that the course of about 400 miles was described with a velocity of twenty-three miles per second.

1869, December 29th, 10h 58 P.M., G. M. T., London and Sandhurst (Kent). The vertical descent of the meteor in the west at Sandhurst, near Hawkhurst in Kent, and its motion from north-north-west to south-south-east, a few degrees below Jupiter, at Notting Hill, London, indicate the direction of its motion as apparently from the radiant A,,, near & Cassiopeia, for the end of December and beginning of January. Adopting this radiant-point for the real direction of its path, the place where the meteor passed near Jupiter, at London, was about forty-five miles high over Winchester; and the meteor passed in the direction of a line from Bath to Chichester, from seventy miles above Amesbury (Wilts) to thirty-five miles above the neighbourhood of Bishops Waltham (Hants). Supposing the meteor's apparent path to have * U in the list of the Report for 1868, p. 403, at R. A. 17°, S. Decl. 10°, enduring from September 6th to November 23rd.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society for December 9th, 1864.

ended near Jupiter at Notting Hill, this is probably not far from a correct estimate of its real course. The length of the path is forty-seven miles, descending at an inclination of 45°, from the north-west by west towards south-east by. east.

1870, August 5th-11th, shooting-stars doubly observed in England. Observations of the August meteors were begun on the 5th, and continued until the 12th of August, 1870, at the request of the Committee, at several stations in England and Scotland, with a view to determine, if possible, the

Heights and positions of sixteen shooting-stars doubly observed in England, August 5th-11th, 1870, at (B.) Birmingham, (H.) Hawkhurst, (Ha.) Hay, South Wales, (L.) London, (M.) Manchester, (T.) East Tisted, Hants, (Y.) York *.

real heights and velocities of the August meteors. Independently of the observations made at Greenwich for this purpose, the heights of sixteen shootingstars were ascertained, the description of whose appearance, and apparent paths, by the several observers are contained at length in the Catalogue. * Corrections of the Figure.-The heights of the Meteors Nos. 15 and 16 are transposed. For the beginning and end heights of the Meteor No. 2, read fifty miles and thirty-three miles.