250 THE METEOR OF JULY 13tM, 1846. 



lief in the doctrines of Christianity, with a spirit bent to Christ. It is 

 true, men may disregard Him, and discourse learnedly of thoughts and 

 tilings, and reap their rich fields of golden grain, but they know nothing 

 of their richness and the high pleasures they afford; they can never 

 walk with Isaac, at eventide, to meditate in the fields, or sit at the tent's 

 door to enjoy with Abraham the company of angels. 



Excuse this digression, it sprang from a consciousness of the diffi- 

 cult task I was about to undertake; the delineation of a system of agri- 

 cultural science. Its elements float in scattered patches, separate or con- 

 fused with other tilings upon the broad ocean of "nesciense." Whether 

 I shall be able to find the central force to attract them around a common 

 point, and assume their relative positions and proportions must remain 

 io a future period. 



Scicniific and PraclicaJ Jlgrlcullurol Jnstilutc^ ) 



Walden, Orange Co., N. Y., August 10, 1846. \ 



THE METEOR OF JULY 13tH, 1846. 



EY DANIEL KIRKVVOOD, OF LANCASTER, PA. 



In the last number of the " Record and Journal " some notice was 

 taken of tlie meteor wliich passed over Maryland and Pennsylvania, on 

 tlie evening of the Lith of July, 1846, and which was visible, at the 

 same time, in the adjacent Slates of New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia. 

 The writer of that article, however, does not seem to have had suffi- 

 cient data for making any very accurate calculations in regard to the 

 phenomenon. In order to obtain information on the subject, I have been 

 at some pains to collect and compare as many newspaper descriptions of 

 the appearance as possible, and have also corresponded with scientific 

 gentlemen residing in various parts of the country. The following is 

 the result of my investigations : 



The course of the meteor was about N. 35° E. It was vertical some- 

 where between York and Lancaster, as the almost unanimous testimony 

 of those who saw it from the latter place, is, that it passed a few degrees 

 to the N. W. of the zenith; while my friend, Mr. D. M. Ettinger, of 

 York, assures me, that, when East of that place, its distance from the ze- 

 nith was ten degrees. Mr. E., who had a fair view of the meteor from 

 its first appearance, is a practical surveyor and mathematician, accustom- 

 ed to the greatest accuracy in the measurement of angles, so that his es- 

 timate may be received with perfect confidence. Now if we imagine a 

 line, corresponding with the direction of the meteor, to be drawn through 

 York, its nearest appearance to Gettysburg will be found to be about 17 



