98 REPORT — 1855. 



last evening informed by a seafaring friend of mine, who was, at the time the 

 Times describes the rushing sottnd to have been heard, sitting on the deck 

 of a vessel in harbour watching the storm, that he saw what appeared to be 

 an immense mass or ball of electric fluid fall, perpendicularly (as it were) 

 into the sea, apparently near the outer light-vessel : the persons in charge of 

 this craft may probably be able to afford further information.' " — Ibid. Oct. 

 1, 1851. 



" The following notice of the meteor of Thursday last closely corresponds 

 with what has already reached us : had our correspondent been able to give 

 us anything like an exact idea of the interval which elapsed betwixt the fire- 

 ball being seen and the sound being heard, we might have formed an estimate 

 of the distance of the falling body, if the hissing spoken of was in reality the 

 same as the rushing through the air described by other observers. We shall 

 be happy to receive the future communication our correspondent promises 

 us. ' My wife and I had been watching the lightning for some time at the 

 door of our bungalow, but feeling very much fatigued, being an invalid, I 

 retired to the sofa, and had scarcely done so when my wife called out that 

 she saw a ball of fire fall into the sea in the vicinity of the outer light-ship. 

 The heavens appeared to open at one spot, from which it descended. This 

 took place between the hours of 10 and 11 p.m. Neither of us noticed at 

 that time any particular noise, but at a later hour I said, — Listen to the con- 

 flict going on amongst the elements : they seemed hissing one another for 

 some moments.'" — Ibid. Oct. 2, 1851. 



The fire-ball here referred to was assumed at the time to have been a 

 meteor, and is set down in Prof. Baden Powell's report of that year as one 

 of three which had been observed during thunder-storms, one on the 18th 

 of March in the N.W. Provinces, seen to fall and strike the ground, giving 

 a clear ringing sound like the crack of a rifle, without echo or reverberation 

 at all like thunder. It appeared 150 yards from the Choki, and resembled 

 in its descent a huge ball of red-hot iron, followed by a band of fire appa- 

 rently about 30 feet in length : another was visible at Kurrachee on the 

 30th of April in the same year. It burst with a violent explosion during a 

 storm of wind and rain, resembling the discharge of a vast battery of 

 artillery ; about a minute afterwards a great ball of fire, supposed to be a 

 meteor, was seen descending into the sea — the third case being that of the 

 25th September already quoted. Departing from the question of earth- 

 quakes, we now come to the conclusion that these balls of fire, supposed to 

 have been meteors, were in reality instances of " the glow discharge" men- 

 tioned by Sir William Snow Harris, and that they are matters of rather fre- 

 quent occurrence in India. In 1832, in the middle of a violent thunder- 

 storm, a great fire-ball was seen to descend over the house of Sir Coliu 

 Halkett near Parell. It burst with a furious explosion, and did much mis- 

 chief all around, amongst other things melting the plate on the sideboard. 

 On the 16th of June 1819, at the time of the great earthquake, a tremendous 

 thunder-storm occurred at Masulipatam, during which a fire-ball was seen 

 to descend on the roof of a bungalow, when it burst with an explosion like 

 a 40-inch shell, and immediately set the thatch in a blaze. These two last 

 cases which we have quoted, one of which occurred during an earthquake, 

 certainly were electi'ic explosions, and they in all respects so closely resemble 

 the others heretofore supposed to be meteors, that we think we are perfectly 

 safe in assuming the phasnomena to have been the same, and that Prof. 

 Powell's Bombay correspondent was in error on the matter. 



