The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1866-11-29

The METEoRIC SHOWER IN ENGLANp.-Tbe
foreign mails received by the Cunard steamer
Scotia, bring full accounts of the shower of
meteors observed in England and Scotland on
the morning of the 14th instant. The display
was magnificent, especially in London, where
the sky was covered with flashing meteors in
such numbers as almost to defy computation.
In other parts of England, the number was
smaller, and at Liverpool q storm prevented OBJ
servations; but wherever the shower was visi-
BILE, the most brilliant effects of color were pro-
duced, and some singular phenomena attended
the course of the meteors. The Times of the
18th has the following account of the display
observed in the neighborhood of Paddington
Green:
The fiery shower ioretold by the science of
America and Europe for the night of the 49,
IA of November of this year, was seen in full
splendor yesterday morning between the hours
OF IL and 2 From about eleven o'clock oeca-
s,onal meteors might be seen gliding along tho
sky from east to west, but these were only the
dvdnt-couriers of the great legion that followed
at later hour. -,
The numbers increased after 12 O'Clock with
great rapidity: From Paddngton Green, %
fairly open position, 207 meteors were counted
between IL and 1890, and of these the greater
number fell after 1920. The next hundred
were counted during the six minutes that sue
ceeded the half hour. Soon after this il be.
came impossible for two people to count the
whole that were visible from this position; and
doubtless from positions with purer atmos-
phere, and wider horizon, the spectacle must
have been one of surprising splendor. Indeed
from window at Highgate, looking n. N. e.,
but with cireumscribed view, an observer
counted 100 meteors in the four minutes be-
tween 1882 and 1885, and no less than 200 in
the two minutes between 1881 and 1880.
As the constellation Leo rose over the houses
north of Paddington Green and cleared itself
OF maze, the divergence of the meteor paths
from a point within it became obvious, not
merely in the directions of the streams that
shot from or through the zenith, but in those
that left their phosphorescents seeming trails in
the sky towards every pointof the compass.
Sometimes these rocket-like lines of light
would glide out like sparks flying from an in
candescent mass of iron under the blows of n
Titanic hammer, but with the distinctive fea.
lures, first, Of those lingering lines of illumi-
mated haze in their track, and secondly, OF
their rarely appearing as if they originated
in the region of the sky from which their
course evidently diverged
Sometimes the meteor was orange and almosa
red in its color, whereas the luminous trait
seemed almost always, probably by contrast
with the surrounding light, of a blush hue.
In one splendid instance the trail, after having
nearly disappeared, together with the rocket
head that had produced it, became again lit up
and visible coincidentally with resuscitatiou
of brightness in the body of the meteor. Now
and then little illuminated puff ball would
appear in the middle of the constellation Leo,
generally more or less elongated or elliptic in
form, as it seemed to be more or less distant,
and at the same time convergent from an i'm
aginery point that seemed about deg. s by
Z. of the star glBaraa Leonis; and one as near
as could be as;ertained to such q point, was
simply a star that waxed and waned, and dis
appeared as one looked at il.
Sometimes q minute point of light. like n
hre-fiy, would dart with an angular, jerking
motion and zig-zag course hither and thither,
but still as if away from Leo.
1t will be perceived that the correctness OF
the N. Y. Herald's cable dispatch in relation tn
the matter is fully established, and that Prot.
Loomis who pronounced it evidently spuri-
ous," was mistaken.