94 REPORT — 1855. 



With a view to theory, no student should fail to read two valuable and 

 elaborate papers in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 

 of Philadelphia, vol. viii. part 1. 1841, new series, viz. Art. VIII. — "On 

 the Perturbations of Meteors approaching the Earth," by B. Pierce, M.A., 

 and Art. IX. — "Researches concerning the periodical Meteors of August 

 and November," by Hans C. Walker, A.P.S., containing investigations of the 

 nature of the orbits of such bodies about the sun, occasionally encountering 

 the earth. 



No. IV. — Extracts of letters from R. P. Greg, Esq., to Professor Powell, 

 dated Sept. ^th and Sept. 9th, ISS-i. 



" ISi'i, Oct. 8th, near Coblentz, a German gentleman (a friend of Mr. 

 Greg's), accompanied by another person, late in the evening, after dark, 

 walking in a dry ploughed field, saw a luminous body descend straight 

 down close to them (not 20 yards off), and heard it distinctly strike the 

 ground with a noise ; they marked the spot, and returning early the next 

 morning as nearly as possible where it seemed to fall, they found a gela- 

 tinous mass of a greyish colour so viscid as ' to tremble all over ' when 

 poked with a stick. It had no appearance of being organic. They, how- 

 ever, took no further care to preserve it." 



" In connexion with the passage of luminous bodies across the field of a 

 telescope observed by the Rev. W. Read (Report 1852, p. 235), Mr. Greg 

 mentions that a friend of his (whose name he does not give) observed an 

 apparently similar phaenomenon, May 22nd, 1854. With a 5-inch object 

 glass equatorial telescope with clockwork, looking for Mercury about 11 

 o'clock, then little more than an hour from the sun, he saw a luminous 

 body about the size and appearance of Mercury cross the field close to 

 Mercury, with a perfectly round and distinct disk ; about a minute after 

 another followed in the same path with about the same velocity (crossing 

 the field in about 2\ seconds by counting the beats of the clock), with an 

 elongated form like a comet ; in a few minutes another followed, smaller and 

 round, with the same direction and velocity. They went N.E. and S.W., 

 and appeared going to the sun. It would have taken Mercury 50 seconds 

 to cross the field ; the telescope being disconnected with the clockwork. He 

 has never before or since seen a similar phaenomenon." 



No. \.— Account of the Meteor of Sept. 30, 1850, by Prof. Bond. 

 Cambridge, U.S. 



It rarely happens that an aerolite remains visible to us during a sufficient 

 period of time to enable an observer to trace its path and determine its ve- 

 locity with anything approaching to the degree of accuracy with which we 

 can, from their slower apparent motion, obtain the same data for the orbits 

 of planets or comets. It is not surprising, therefore, that so little is certainly 

 known regarding the origin of meteors. 



Laplace considered it possible that they might be fragments of the moon, 

 ejected from some of the numerous craters of our satellite by volcanic 

 power ; others have supposed that innumerable smaller masses of dense 

 matter, not in immediate connexion with the larger planetary bodies, might 

 be dispersed throughout infinite space, and occasionally brought within the 

 preponderating influence of the earth. Some persons have believed that 

 meteors were the smaller, as the asteroids may be the larger portions of a 

 planet which formerly occupied a position between the orbits of Jupiter and 

 Mars. Whatever hypothesis may be adopted in regard to their origin, we 



