SHOOTING -STARS. 299 



in every evening for more than a year ; I am compelled to dissent Phenomena 

 from some of Mr. S \s facts respecting these phenomena, and gtars°and tiie 

 entirely so from his manner of accounting for them, by electri- means of 

 city, an agent which we well know was in fashion a few years tiieu| 1V &^ 

 ago, for explaining a great variety of phenomena. 



My observations, above alluded to, decidedly prove, that all 

 which ought properly to be called shooting-stars, having only a 

 short and rr.pid course, and bet a sm 11 apparent size, appeared 

 only when the air was clear rind cloudless, in the place of observa- 

 tion, and when only a very small degree of extraneous light 

 prevailed , and that the calculated place of many of these, 

 from the best of our concurrent observations, made at 6 miles 

 distant,shewing them to be at 60 to J (30 miles distance from us, 

 and at 40 to 50 miles of perpendicular height above the 

 earth's surface, seemed exactly to accord with the short, feeble, 

 and unobtrusive nature of their appearances. 



My observations also shew, as I have mentioned, a very 

 regular series, of what I denominate Meteors, the least of which 

 were nearly as short, quick, and faint jn their appearances, a$ 

 the shooting-stars, to others which were very long in their 

 courses, slow in their motions (apparently) and with correspond- 

 ing degrees of size and brightness, and attended by explosions 

 and sparks, and small trains, some of the largest of them j 

 but none of which last ever appeared biit in clear parts of 

 the sky : and our calculations shewed all of these last, to bd 

 far above the height of the ordinary clouds. 



Mr. S. mistakes, apparently, in supposing me to have assert* 

 ed, that the larger class of meteors are not sometimes visible 

 on moon- light nights, and even before the day is quite closed, 

 as I have more than once myself observed, but' never zvher*: 

 clouds appeared at the time, as we almost constantly see of 

 flashes of lightning, the only visible electric luminous pheno- 

 mena of the atmosphere, perhaps. 



Whence Mr. S. gathered, that satellitic (not planetary or 

 cometary) bodies, move " with immeasurable velocity," I arri 

 at a loss to think. 



As Mr. Forster's authority has been referred to >(though very 



inconclusively, I maintain) in page 34, 1 cannot help repeating, 



that if that gentleman, or Mr. L. Howard, ever did, or if they 



sow concur with Mr. S. as to the shooting-stars being an 



' X 2 electrical 



