S86 Meteors seen in America 



The testimony of an eyewitness is also adduced for the 

 appearance of meteors, exactly resembling those in England, 

 ^\e days afterwards, at Mocha, on the Red Sea, where the 

 same phenomena occurred, from 1 a.m. till after daylight, 

 Nov. 14. 1832. {Amer, Journ,, xxvi. 136.) 



Professor Olmsted also mentions a shower of meteors seen 

 in America about the middle of April, 1 803, which I have no 

 hesitation in connecting with the shower of stones at L'Aigle, 

 in France, April 26. 1803. [Mag, Nat. Hist., VII. 296.) 

 The other examples of the professor are, I think, plainly 

 to be referred at once to a volcanic origin, especially the 

 black dust at Constantinople in 472, which, according to Pro- 

 copius, was traced from Vesuvius. Additional information 

 iias been received that the meteors of 1833 were seen, contem- 

 poraneously with the other localities, at Kingston, Jamaica ; 

 in Mexico, in lat. 34*^ 30' N. ; and on the shores of Lake 

 Huron. 



The explanation of the professor is most elaborately minute, 

 and does no injustice to his celebrity as a calculator : but I 

 must say that, if I were not attached to my own hypothesis, I 

 could not agree in his upon his present showing. He assumes 

 that the matterof which these meteors were composed is similar 

 to that which composes the tails of comets, and that the 

 meteors of 1799, 1832, and 1833 are results of the destruc- 

 tion of one and the same body ; and thence, by the aid of 

 astronomical reasoning, deduces this conclusion : — " T/iat the 

 meteors of Nov, 13. consisted of portions of the extreme parts of 

 a nebulous hody^ *which revolves round the sun in an orbit in- 

 terior to that of the earth, hit little inclined to the plane of the 

 ecliptic, having its aphelion near the earthh path, and having 

 a period in time of\S2 days nearly J^ 



I have neither time nor leisure, at present, to examine here 

 in detail the very ingenious, and apparently satisfactory, pro- 

 cess by which these meteors are resolved into cometic frag- 

 ments. I imagine that philosophers will find so many diffi- 

 culties in the admission of the professor's theory, that he will 

 not be able to maintain it. I would merely ask, if the appear- 

 ances seen in such different places imply the object to be the 

 same, why we may not include other similar displays in that 

 comprehensive identity ? Why we may not suppose that the 

 meteors, of precisely similar character, seen on August 10. 

 1833, in Worcestershire, at 10 to 12 p.m.*, were cometic 

 fragments ? How happens it that, if this comet has a motion 

 from N.w. to s.E. (Prof. Olmsted, p. 143.), the meteors seen at 

 Mocha, on Nov. 14., made their appearance in England ^i?^ 



* See Mr. Lees's paper on the aurora, in The Analj/st, No. i. p. 33., for 

 August, 1834, 



