228 Mr. J. Glaisher 07i the Meteor which appeared 



great was the change, in total darkness ; but turning to his 

 knife in the hay, he finished cutting what he wanted, took it 

 up with his Janthorn, went round two sides of the rick (a 

 small one), opened a door into a loft, threw the hay up 

 into the loft, shut the door and fastened it, and then went 

 round the stable to a gate into the stable-yard ; as he reached 

 this gate he heard the explosion which everyone else had 

 heard, and calculated that it must have been at least a minute 

 and a half, perhaps two minutes, from the time the light dis- 

 appeared to his hearing the sound. I judged the time between 

 my losing sight of the light and hearing the sound to have 

 been the same, and as also do many others, who both saw the 

 light and heard the sound. 



"The sound was heard distinctly and loudly everywhere, and 

 in every house around here. Some hearing it, fancied that 

 barrels had burst in their cellars, and got up and went down 

 to see; others fancied that a door or shutter was broken open 

 and thrown down, and also got up to see ; the alarm was 

 general, so loud was the noise, and so peculiar the sound 

 as differing from that of thunder. One young man sat read- 

 ing after being left by a few friends who had been practising 

 music, and a large drum that stood near him with the sticks 

 upon the head of it, was so affected by the sound that the 

 drumsticks were slightly raised by its reverberation." 



XII. Hampstead Road. From the Illustrated London 

 News of Feb. 16, 1850. 



" I was an eye-witness of a splendid meteor on the night of 

 Monday the 11th instant, at twenty minutes to eleven o'clock. 

 It first appeared like a star, about tour times as large as Venus, 

 with a dull golden lustre, and rapidly increased in brightness 

 till it became a white light, resembling an immense diamond, 

 and put forth a tail like a waving blade of red flame ; which, 

 as it proceeded, either disappeared or was lost in the increased 

 brightness of the head, which at last shone so brilliantly as to 

 light up the whole atmosphere. The light certainly far ex- 

 ceeded that of the full moon ; it then became suddenly extin- 

 guished; it evidently displayed the process of combustion. I 

 first saw it somewhere a little above the Pleiades, and it 

 descended obliquely towards the north, and disappeared above 

 the lower part of Cassiopoeia. I think its greatest length was 

 about 2°; the length of its visible path about 15° or 20"^ ; and 

 the time it was visible three or four seconds. I thought the 

 last I saw of the meteor as the light vanished was a red spot, 

 but it disappeared instantaneously. I looked round at the 

 clock directly it had disappeared, and it was exactly twenty 

 minutes to eleven. 



Feb. 13, 1850. G. BowLES, Jun." 



