These investigations, completed in March 1867, proved the existence of a great meteoric orbit extending to the orbit of Uranus. Meanwhile Newton had predicted a meteoric shower on the evening of November 13 and morning of November 14, 1866. His prediction was fulfilled. The shower was inferior to that of 1833, but was still a magnificent spectacle. Sir Robert Ball, then employed at Lord Rosse’s Observatory, observed the shower, and records the impossibility of counting the meteors. This great shower attracted the attention of astronomers all over the world to the study of meteors. Meanwhile Schiaparelli had been working at the subject for some time, and in four letters addressed to Secchi, towards the end of 1866, he showed that meteors were members of the Solar System, possessed of a greater velocity than that of the Earth, and travelling in orbits resembling those of comets, in the fact that they moved in no particular plane, and that their motion was both direct and retrograde. Schiaparelli computed the orbit of the Perseids or August meteors, and was astonished to find it identical with the comet of August 1862. This was a proof of the connection between these two apparently widely different types of celestial bodies. Early in 1867 Schiaparelli found that Le Verrier’s elements for the orbit of the Leonids were identical with those of the comet of 1866, discovered by _Ernst Tempel_ (1821-1889). Peters of Altona had meanwhile reached the same conclusion; while _Edmund Weiss_ (born 1837) of Vienna pointed out the similarity of the orbit of a star-shower on April 20 and that of the comet of 1861. He also drew attention, independently of Galle and D’Arrest, to the close connection between the orbits of the lost Biela’s comet and the Andromedid meteors of November. All doubt as to the connection of comets and meteors was removed by the great shower on November 27, 1872. Biela’s lost comet was due at perihelion in 1872, and although searched for was not observed; but when the Earth crossed its orbit, a great meteoric shower took place. “It became evident,” says Miss Clerke, “that Biela’s comet was shedding over us the pulverised products of its disintegration.” The shower was little inferior to that of 1866. Meanwhile _Ernst Klinkerfues_ (1827-1884), Professor at Göttingen, believing that Biela’s comet itself had encountered the Earth, telegraphed to _Norman Robert Pogson_ (1829-1891), Government astronomer at Madras, to search for the comet in the opposite region of the sky. Pogson did observe a comet, but certainly not Biela’s, although probably another fragment of the missing body.