was attracted towards the north by the bright light of this beautiful meteor. At first it was as large as Venus three times magnified, and of a blue colour. In about a second it passed into the pear-shape, leaving a thin streak behind it. [The appearance of a fireball seen at Wisbech on March 4th, 1872 (see these Reports for 1872, p. 76)," like a drop of molten silver," is here referred to by Mr. Miller as exactly resembling the aspect which this fireball assumed at its greatest brightness.] In another second it diminished to the size of a star of third magnitude and appeared yellow. There was no explosion, but it disappeared about 15° from the horizon."

Other descriptions at Teignmouth, Wath near Rotherham, Halstead in Essex, Faringdon in Berks, York, Ludlow, Bath, Cambridge, and Manchester agree in describing the luminous appearance of sparks, corruscations, and light flakes accompanying the meteor as confined to a short flaming and flickering tail, sometimes divided, following the head, somewhat redder than the foremost brightest part, which had an apparent width of or, while the whole apparent length of the oval disk of the meteor was fully equal to or somewhat surpassed one lunar diameter, and the nucleus collapsed on nearing the horizon without any signs of an explosion. Some portions of the train of sparks appear to have been of more persistency than the rest, as an observer at Sudbury, Suffolk, writes :-"The shooting-star itself was very large and bright; and attached was a long tail, broken at about a third of its length from the end into dashes and dots of bright colours, leaving a white track behind for several seconds after the meteor itself had disappeared." The accounts at other places describe a flame-like tail and sparks following the head, although not a persistent light-streak left upon the meteor's course. An observer at Duxford, near Cambridge, saw not only the meteor but the sparks also through an ordinary white calico window-blind, which was down at the time.

As regards the meteor's brightness, its light at some points of observation fully equalled and perhaps surpassed the intensity of full moonlight. In a letter to Mr. Glaisher, an observer at St. Ives, Hunts, Mr. J. King Watts, relates that the meteor "started into view from Ursa Major immediately opposite the moon; it travelled slowly, was of the most intense bright white light, round, and five or six times the size of any of the planets. The sky was clear and cloudless. We were travelling between the moon and the meteor, and our shadows on the road caused by the moon were of course large and clear, but those caused by the meteor were more clear and more sharply defined." A notice of no less interest and importance (but with which no name and locality were given) appeared in the Northumberland Daily Express,' affording good proof of the intensity and duration of the meteor's light. "There was a tree in the passage; and suddenly I found myself surrounded by a wonderfully bright light, and the shadow of the tree was cast on the wall on my left, every leaf and twig more distinctly than in the sunshine." Believing the light to proceed from a window in the house, and perceiving it to come from beyond the house, the observer stepped back a few paces to the corner, and was just in time to see a most brilliant meteor descending towards the earth. "It did not burst or explode in any way, but gradually diminished till it became extinct." The glare of the meteor's light on the ground, already strongly lighted up by the moon, attracted Mr. J. W. Proctor's attention to it when driving north-westwards from Grimstone towards York; and an observer near Carlisle, driving southwards to that town from Longtown, describes the meteor's appearance thus:-" At 8h 25m a meteor of most dazzling brightness caught my eye. I saw it first apparently in

close proximity to the full moon, which by the side of the meteor appeared quite pale. In colour it was not unlike a Roman candle [white or blue]. It moved very slowly through the sky, in a direction westwards and downwards." [The direction assumed in the calculations is towards the point iv or 20 indicated by the hands of a clock, having the moon at the centre of the dial.]

The earth-point of this meteor, as concluded from the observations by Cap-* tain Tupman, or the place where the meteor's real path prolonged would have reached the ground, is in the neighbourhood of Sedburgh, a town in the extreme north-west part of Yorkshire, and not far south-south-eastwards from Carlisle. The point of disappearance was at a height of only 13 or 14 miles above the earth's surface, not far from Pately Bridge, West Riding, Yorkshire. The distance of this latter point from Wath, near Rotherham, is about 47 miles, which sound would traverse, with its ordinary speed in air, in about 3m 47. Mr. W. M. Burman, who saw and describes the meteor as it appeared at this place, heard a detonation which, from its close agreement with the calculated time required by the sound of the meteor's disruption at disappearance to reach him, was probably a distinctly audible sound of its explosion. He writes:-"The magnificent meteor of Tuesday night, Sept. 14th, was well seen here in a cloudless sky at 8h 26m G.M.T. I was walking, and the full moon was throwing my shadow on the wall on my right, when suddenly a dazzling light shone around, and my shadow vanished from the wall. Upon looking up, I saw this magnificent meteor slowly careering across the sky, quite overpowering the light of the moon. It passed nearly overhead, and disappeared in the N.W. by W. It was of a half-moon shape, the preceding part being convex and sharp, the following part flame-like and flickering, and of a brilliant bluish-white colour. No red tinge was seen from first to last, nor train, nor sparks. Its diameter was about half that of the moon. In that dazzling light it was impossible to see any star; but soon after it had passed I tried to make out its path*. Its total visibility was about 6 seconds; but I only saw it during 4 or 42 seconds, as it went behind the roof of an adjacent house; but a friend (who saw the end of its course from a neighbouring place) says that it simply disappeared, no sparks being visible, nor any change of colour. Three and a half minutes after it disappeared I heard a sharp and sudden explosion, like the report of a small cannon at a distance, exactly from the direction that the meteor had taken ; but whether it had any thing to do with the meteor or not I cannot tell." Mr. Burman adds that "the rumbling of a distant train prevented me from hearing any sound during the passage of the meteor, if any such were audible;" and it was, in fact, remarked by several who described the meteor, that while it was in sight a rushing or hissing sound accompanied its passage through the air. Passing over these descriptions as impressions of very doubtful positive reality, the case of such a sound recorded at York by Mr. Proctor may perhaps be explained as due to a real detonation, of which he gives the following description at that place:-"I have some impression that it was accompanied or followed by a rushing sound, and a friend of mine thought the same, but amounting to an explosion at a great distance." In a note of some length in Nature' (vol. xii. p. 460) on large meteors in the

*Mr. Burman's position, so nearly under the brightest portion of the meteor's track, may have led to its extreme brightness hiding and overpowering the sparks and duller fragments which, at more distant stations, are said to have attended and followed the meteor in some part of its course as a train of redder colour than the head.

early part of September, 1875, particulars of the appearance of that of September 14th as seen at Bradford are extracted from the Bradford Observer' of September 15th, where it is related that "to a spectator it bore the appearance of some solid body in a state of combustion, the sparks flying out on all sides, and a track of flame being left after its passage. Its passage was accompanied by a noise as of a loud explosion, which was plainly heard, not only by those who were outside, but by persons inside the houses who did not see the aërolite itself. All parties concur in saying that so strong a light was cast around that a newspaper could easily be read for the space of half a minute."

It should be remarked as a curious coincidence, not unfrequently recorded in the accounts of large meteors, that a companion fireball of the brilliant meteor of September 14th was noticed by one observer of its appearance. Mr. J. J. Allinson, at Lynn, Norfolk, states that "at 8h 20m P.M., the moon shining brilliantly in a cloudless and clear sky, I saw very low down in the eastern heavens a bright meteor of a bluish colour, three or four times the size and two or three times the brightness of Venus at her largest and brightest. The bearing was about E. by N., and it seemed moving in a northerly direction, but, by its getting larger, to be approaching the spot where I was standing. I should say it disappeared before reaching the horizon. [There is little doubt, Captain Tupman observes, that this meteor belonged to the same meteor-system as the much larger companion fireball by which it was shortly followed.] About 4 or 5 minutes afterwards, whilst looking in a south-westerly direction, I was attracted by a bright light in the north-western sky, and on looking towards that quarter observed a most splendid meteor, about the size and colour of the first, but much more brilliant, descending from near the last star [] in the tail of the Great Bear in an almost vertical, but I should say somewhat irregular course." Of the former of these two fireballs no corresponding observations (as it must have been seen over distant parts of the North Sea or over Belgium) from other places have hitherto been obtained; but from its central position over the midland and northern counties of England, observations of the second extremely bright meteor of the pair were recorded abundantly at all stations throughout the country, as has been described, from its interest and importance, in the foregoing paragraphs at considerable length.

Both this large fireball and that which preceded it on Sept. 7th may be presumed from these descriptions to have been "aërolitic or detonating ones; and it is remarkable that they had nearly a common radiant-point, and that this point of divergence or real direction of the two meteors' flights is in close agreement with well-established radiant-points of shooting-stars in the first half of September, to which the observations of Heis and Schmidt, and the meteor-shower lists of Greg and Tupman, all agree in assigning very nearly corresponding places and durations. The following Table, p. 144 (from the Monthly Notices' of the Astronomical Society sup. cit.), describes the results of calculation from observations of these three large meteors; and the closing words of his communication to the Astronomical Register' (from which the foregoing particulars are extracted) will here describe the astronomical determinations obtained by Captain Tupman as regards the actual orbits and the probable known showers or systems of ordinary shooting-stars to which the last two detonating fireballs of these three bright September meteors may, in all probability, be conjectured to have belonged.

Heights and Real Paths of large September Meteors, 1875. By Captain TUPMAN.

Radiant-point. Height and Position of Real Path at Length of Path, Dura

Regarding the second, which, like the last of these meteors, was probably aerolitic, Captain Tupman observes :-" It had two heads, one close behind the other, or it divided itself at mid course, the two parts slowly increasing their distance apart by retardation of the hindermost as they rushed through some 50 miles in something under 3 seconds of time. This appears to be a proof of sensible retardation by the density of the atmosphere, although its pressure could hardly have exceeded two tenths of an inch of mercury. Had the meteor remained in existence another second it would have fallen into the village of Castle Hedingham, 5 miles S.W. of Sudbury. The heated matter left behind it in the form of a tail was visible along 10 or 15 miles of its path"*. On the resemblance of the orbit of the last of the three meteors to that of the second, the following considerations are also adduced:-"The astronomical radiant-point is within 15°, probably within 10° of that of the meteor of Sept. 7th. The two meteors were also similar in character, and they appear to have moved with nearly equal velocity, something under 20 miles a second. This part of the heavens has also been known for many years as a radiant-region for shooting-stars at this period of the year.

"The mean of the two found by Schmidt is within 3° of the Sept. 14 fireball radiant, and the mean of the other three is as close to the Sept. 7 radiant. The old positions, therefore, receive a genuine and unexpected confirmation from these two fireballs, the radiants obtained for which are certainly quite as accurate as the others, and merit being classed as new determinations."

An interesting notice (as observed above) of the remarkable fireballs of the first two weeks in September appeared in Nature' of Sept. 23rd, 1875 (vol. xii. p. 460), in the course of which some particulars similar to those related above of the appearances of these splendid meteors are described.

Among the few accurate descriptions which were obtained of the large daylight fireball of the 22nd of December, 1875, the accounts of its appearance by observers at Dorking, at Southampton, and near Ware are included in the list of large meteors accompanying this Report. The following observation of it by Mr. T. W. Webb (Nature,' vol. xii. p. 187) furnishes some further extremely valuable notes of its apparent course.

It should be observed that in his investigations of the stonefall of Pultusk (Jan. 30, 1868) it was shown by Galle that the area upon which the stones fell was vertically below the point of the fireball's disappearance (twenty miles above the earth), and not, as might have been anticipated, in the line of the meteor's obliquely descending course prolonged onwards from that point to meet the earth's surface. A drawing of the fireball of September 7, 1875, from a sketch at the time, was recently communicated to the Committee by Mr. H. Corder, representing his view of the meteor in the end part of its course, which he observed. After a bright disruption into several pieces (seen by other observers), two large nuclei were visible, not following each other, but moving side by side, equally bright and tapering, and one of them about half a length in advance of the other, with a clear interval of about one diameter of each between them. A very small fragment was also visible, which disappeared quickly, while the two heads continued their course, with scarcely any changes of brightness or of relative position, from near a Andromeda to near x Persei, where they died out rather suddenly, leaving no streaks, almost together. The sound came from the S.E., where the meteor burst, not from the east, where it died away; and persons who saw it before the disruption said that the meteor was then a single body. 1876.

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