400 



than the body. It was at no time perfectly continuous, nor 

 was it brush-like, but rather like a trail of sparks or flashes of 

 yellowish red light left behind, and becoming rapidly extinct 

 behind the body. Possibly the reddish tinge of the tail light 

 was merely complementary to the bluish light of the nucleus. 

 At about the highest apparent point of its course, the tail sud- 

 denly broke in two, as it were, and left a blank space betvveen 

 its remains which followed, and the body itself, for perhaps 

 one-fifth of a second or thereabouts, during which interval the 

 end of the divided tail next the body was larger and more lu- 

 minous, as if a subordinate body or nucleus was temporarily 

 being formed. The tail was of about the same length, and the 

 body of the same magnitude and brilliancy, during the whole 

 of its course. 



" As it descended towards the west I watched it eagerly, 

 to see if any solid body would drop from it, but there was no 

 sign of any. It seemed to go out, as it appeared, with all the 

 suddenness with which the arc of light appears and disappears, 

 on making or breaking connexion of the poles of a large gal- 

 vanic battery. 



" There was no sound as of explosion at the moment of 

 its extinction, nor any train of smoke or vapour left after it. 



" The general shape of the meteor was that of a nail with 

 the head flying foremost. 



" On my return home at half-past 5 o'clock, I found that 

 two other members of my family had each separately seen the 

 flight of the meteor from different parts of our dwelling-house, 

 at 98, Capel-street, Dublin. On examining them as to the 

 time, I satisfied myself that they had both seen the same 

 meteor, and the same that we saw at Salt Hill. I was also 

 able to get each party to stand precisely in the spot he had 

 witnessed the phenomenon from, and (the horizon being limited 

 luckily in this case by buildings in all directions) to point out 

 to me the precise points over those buildings, at which the 

 meteor appeared and disappeared. 



