392 Chronicles of Science. [July 
of light, reminding an observer of the zodiacal light in its form, 
but rapidly rising and becoming brighter. When at an altitude of 
about 40° due east, the meteor emerged like a fireball from a roman 
candle, of a blue colour, about a quarter of the apparent diameter of 
the full Moon in width, and drawing after it a trail of reddish- 
coloured sparks, 24° or 3° in length ; as it passed overhead the out- 
pouring and falling behind of the matter forming the train became 
distinctly visible. At Wimbledon, near London, where the meteor 
was seen by Mr. F. C. Penrose, it vanished suddenly, or at any 
rate very rapidly, about 8° N.W. ofa Lyrz. It traversed the entire 
length of the valley of the Thames—a distance of seventy-five 
miles—from forty-one miles above the Nore to twenty-seven miles 
above the earth’s surface in the neighbourhood of Henley-on-Thames. 
On the average of four separate accounts, estimated by different 
observers between four and ten seconds, the time taken by the meteor 
to travel the entire distance, about seventy-five miles, was six seconds 
and a half. On this estimate the velocity of the meteor relatively to 
the earth’s surface was about eleven miles per second. ‘The direction 
of the actual position of the meteor’s flight was from a point in the 
neighbourhood of the constellation Taurus, between Taurus and the 
head of Cetus. 
The distance of the meteor at the moment of its disappearance 
from Wimbledon, collectively determined from these accounts, is 
about thirty-six miles. At Wimbledon, Mr. F. C. Penrose heard a loud 
report, like that of a cannon fired off at the distance of some miles, 
distinct enough to be heard very plainly by one other person at 
Wimbledon, about two minutes and twenty seconds after the meteor 
disappeared. Sound, with its ordinary velocity of 1,090 feet per 
second in common air, would take two minutes and fifty-four 
seconds to travel the entire distance of thirty-six miles from the 
point of the disappearance of the meteor to Wimbledon. Consider- 
ing, as before, the difficulty of fixing the exact position of the 
apparent path of the meteor, and hence the approximate nature of 
the real path concluded from the independent statements of the 
observers, the agreement of the calculated time with the time 
observed by Mr. Penrose, between the disappearance of the meteor 
and the occurrence of the sound, must be regarded as a near coin- 
cidence. There can be little doubt from this circumstance—from 
the nature of the sound, the great apparent brightness of the fire- 
ball, and from its near approach to the earth—that this meteor was 
really a detonating fire-ball. 
Detonating meteors are described in the British Association 
Reports as having taken place in England during the last five years, 
very nearly on the same date of the year as the meteor of the 21st 
of November, 1865. 
The epochs of the 9th—11th of February, and the 19th—21st 
