338 MEMOIRS NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, VOL. XIII. 



which the largest stones fell, is nearly east from the village of Cambridge, at which some of the observations which 

 he records were made; it is also stated that a large number of stones fell southeast of Cambridge. The truth is that 

 New Concord is nearly west of Cambridge, and that not one of the stones has yet been found to have fallen southeast 

 of the latter place. 



On the map contained in Professor Smith's article, the lines of latitude place the fall of meteoric stones full 60 

 nautical miles farther north than it really occurred; while Parkersburg, the place of a most important observation, 

 quoted by him, is placed too far north by about 37 nautical miles. Such errors, if allowed to stand uncorrected, would 

 involve the whole subject of the meteor's path in confusion. 



Among the observations which Professor Smith selects as noteworthy I find the following: "Mr. D. Mackley, of 

 Jackson County, states that he was standing on the platform of the railroad station in Berlin, 20 miles south of Parkers- 

 burg, when he saw in a northeast direction a ball of fire about 30° above the horizon," etc. The value of this obser- 

 vation will appear when it is considered that there is no railroad passing through any place 20 miles south of Parkers- 

 burg, that there is no place named Berlin in that part of Virginia, and that the village of Berlin from which Mr. 

 Mackley saw the meteor is in the State of Ohio, nearly 50 miles west of the point indicated by Professor Smith. The 

 quotation is substantially in Mr. Mackley's own words (as reported from the Cincinnati Commercial by D. M. Johnson, 

 in the American Journal of Science, July, 1860), with the exception of the words "20 miles south of Parkersburg," 

 which are added. This mistake is the more unaccountable, because in Mr. Johnson's communication the place of 

 observation is described as 80 miles southwest of Cambridge, while both in Mr. Mackley's letter to the Commercial and 

 in my more complete report of his testimony, from which Professor Smith elsewhere quotes, the place is precisely 

 designated as Berlin, 6 miles east of Jackson, Ohio. But the statement, when corrected, is not of more consequence 

 than several others which Professor Smith omits altogether from his list of observations worthy of note; though he after- 

 wards gives them in part, as having been relied upon by Professor Andrews and myself. 



In commenting upon my conclusions, Professor Smith says: "As regards the supposed elevation of 40 miles when 

 the first reports were heard, I would simply ask the question, is it possible, with the established views of the conduc 

 tion of sound by rarefied air, that any conceivable noise, produced by a meteorite 40 miles distant from the earth, in 

 a medium quite as rare if not rarer than the best air pump can produce, would reach us at all, or if so, in the manner 

 described by observers? " 



I need only say in reply that the writer here attempts to invalidate my conclusions by throwing doubt on pre- 

 mises from which I reasoned. That the sounds in question were somehow connected with the fall of stones none will 

 deny. That they proceeded from an elevation of 40 miles is a view which might well be received with doubt; it is 

 certainly a view which I never maintained. How the sounds were caused, whether by violent disruption of parts or 

 otherwise, is a question which it would be foreign to the purpose of this article to discuss; but I may state in this con- 

 nection one important fact relating to them, because I shall have occasion to refer to it again. The successive reports 

 heard at great altitudes in the districts where the sto.ies fell, and apparently connected with the descent of the sepa- 

 rate pieces through the clouds, were entirely distinct from the one great detonation which was heard at great distances 

 from that district. The former were distinclty heard only over an area of a few miles. The latter shook buildings 

 from Wheeling, Virginia, to Athens County, Ohio. It is ascertained by careful inquiries to have been heard from 

 Columbiana County on the northeast to within 8 miles of Chillicothe on the southwest, and from Knox County on the 

 northwest to the borders of the third tier of counties in Virginia on the southeast, an area of about 150 miles in diam- 

 eter. At all places within this area, except those near Cambridge and New Concord, it was described as a single sound, 

 a sudden concussion resembling thunder or the discharge of a heavy piece of ordnance, followed by a roar of about 

 2 seconds in continuance. A merchant of Marietta, happening to be at dinner, suspected it was the explosion of a 

 powder magazine in his store about a quarter of a mile distant. The Parkersburg Ne u»s says: "The houses shook as with 

 an earthquake." In the counties of Washington, Morgan, Noble, Monroe, and Belmont, and in places along the Vir- 

 ginia side of the Ohio River from Parkersburg to Wheeling, those who were within doors very generally attributed it 

 to an earthquake. The windows rattled, and local papers state that the door of an engine house was jarred open at 

 Bellair, near Wheeling. The lines of direction of the sound from all sides, as distinguished by those who happened to 

 be out of doors, cross each other in the southern (not far from the central) part of Noble County, while the inhabit- 

 ants of the region thought it was overhead. Professor Andrews, giving the results of personal inquiries, says: "The 

 people of the northern part of Noble County heard it in a southern or southeastern direction, and not in a northwestern 

 direction toward New Concord." At Zanesville, about 12 miles from New Concord, the Courier described the noise, 

 not as a succession of sounds, but as an "explosion." These facts clearly indicate that the great detonation heard at 

 these various places was one and the same sound, and that it proceeded from a point over the interior of Noble County. 

 The most probable location is 5 or 6 miles south of Sarahsville. It was undoubtedly the first produced, but the last 

 heard, of the successive sounds described as receding to the southeast by witnesses in the neighborhood where the 

 meteoric stones fell, and it was compared by them to the roar of thunder. 



Again, Professor Smith says: "As regards the size of the meteorite, I have but to refer to my experiments made in 

 1854, and published in the American Journal of Science of 1855, to show the perfect fallacy of calculating the size of 

 luminous objects by their apparent discs." 



As the above remark is made in reference to my estimate of the size of the meteor, it is but justice to myself to 

 say that I had acknowledged the danger of error from this source, and had only insisted that if the apparent disc and 

 the estimated distance be assumed as data, we shall obtain for the diameter of the meteor about three-eighths of a mile. 



