€ 
these that I have seen, was there any element descr 
272 _ Dr. Reynolds on Meteors. 
tions of electricity. Clouds of opposite electricities will ap 
proach each other and explode, by the positive imparting as 
much electrical fire to the negative cloud as will make them 
equal, when just as much water as the imparted fire held in 
solution, will be set at liberty and descend to the earth. If, 
however, this solution be deemed inapplicable, perhaps the 
following may be admitted. Thus, when heat is urged upon 
incombustible* bodies with a force that overcomes the cohe- 
and as it is a universal property of heat to counteract the gra~ 
vitating force of bodies, these compounds must necessarily be- 
come volant, and ascend as above stated. It is only thermo- 
metrical or sensible heat, that destroys the attraction of cohe- 
sion existing between the particles of bodies, the repulsive 
power of latent heat’being barely able to counteract this pro- 
perty, when the elements under its dominion are removed be- 
yond a certain distance from each other; now the very redu- 
ced temperature in the high regions to which these gaseous 
clouds will ascend, may admit their earthy and metallic parti- 
cles within the sphere of cohesive or aggregative attraction, 
when the caloric will be expelled like water from @ sponges 
accompanied by all the phenomena above stated. 
_-'The third general head of my subject leads me to inquire into 
the constituent principles of meteoric stones: sundry paper 
on the analysis of these productions, have been furnished 45 by 
chemists of acknowledged reputation and ability, 
not been previously known. But should it hereafter be foun 
that air-stones contain matters not found on our globe, th 
will afford no absolute proof of the foreign origin o : 
stones, as we are successively discovering earthy and metallic 
principles of distinct characters from those already know?- 
*Perhaps there is no body in nature absolutely incombustible- but - a 
term here in common accepfation. 
