434 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



and as no s. e. wind was produced, " it is an absolute proof 

 that no foreign bodies, of sufficient weight and consistency to 

 drive the air before them down to the lower regions of the 

 atmosphere, did fall from a comet, or any other body, into 

 the air during that memorable night." (p. 17.) 



A final argument is, that, if the bodies fell as asserted, and 

 the air was consequently condensed as stated, there would 

 have been an equivalent resistence from the ascending columns 

 around the meteors, and from the reaction of the compressed 

 air beneath, which would have retarded the meteors, and, per- 

 haps, have thrown them up again, in the same way as mus- 

 tard seed shot from a gun will sometimes fly back in the 

 discharger's face ; and, if the bodies fell 2238 miles by force 

 of gravity, the velocity must have been eight or ten times greater 

 than that of mustard seed. And, therefore, for these reasons, 

 Mr. Espy infers that " the meteors of November, 1833, "were 

 not bodies falling towards the earth by the force of gravity, 

 neither from within nor from without the atmosphere" (p. 19.) 



Mr. Espy further shows that in many places the meteors 

 could not have been ten miles high. [The arguments he em- 

 ploys from examples are the same as that I have employed 

 above respecting the meteors seen, on 13th November, 1834, 

 at Yale College, but not at Philadelphia (p. 420.)]. It ap- 

 pears that the meteors of 1833, at forty leagues from Matan- 

 zas, in Cuba (where they fell perpendicularly), i. e. in lat. 

 32 J °, long. 32°, "seemed to follow the direction of the wind, 

 which was E. N. E." (p. 86.) It does not appear, either, 

 that the different observers saw the same meteors, which they 

 would have done at an altitude of ten, or even five, miles 

 high. The angular velocity of the trains would also prove 

 that the meteors were not more than two or three miles high. 

 Professor Olmsted quotes one meteor he supposes to have been 

 thirty miles high, whose train moved eastward, equal to an 

 ordinary cloud a mile high carried by the wind at the rate of 

 ten miles an hour. Now, he says, such being the case, the 

 actual motion must have been 300 miles per hour. Mr. Espy 

 adds, that it must have been, in the upper part of the train, 

 more than 600 miles per hour ! Olmsted is, therefore, forced 

 to admit that this meteor must have been near the earth. 

 [Why not the rest ?] There is a strong presumption that 

 the meteors were not five miles high. 



Mr. Espy argues, from the explosions heard and the odour 

 elicited [mentioned in VII. 290., with a note on the latter 

 phenomenon], that their distance must have been very little, 

 for the noises heard were such as could only be heard a few 

 hundred yards. The places where sounds were heard were 



