350 Shooting Stars may he used in finding the Longitude. 



to be able to over-top some iiiountaiii chain on the Earth's 

 surface, with which it has come in forcible contact ? ; and may 

 we not with probability thus account, for some of the wonder- 

 ful stories, of huge burning Rocks (supposed by some to be vol- 

 canic) being hurled, and mountains being split, and in part over- 

 turned thereby, &c. which in vague histories, have been men- 

 tioned ? 



I shall not now further extend these Queries, by the mention 

 of several other points, which engaged my very anxious attention 

 about 2() vears ago, while making a series of sinniltancous obser- 

 vations on Shooting Stars and Meteors, with your able Corre- 

 spondent Mr. Benjamin Bevan, at Woburn, and at Leighton in 

 Bedfordshire : because 1 rather fear, that the present generation 

 of observers and calculators, will (like myself) shrink from the 

 appalling difficulties of the task, of attempting to ascertain the 

 periodic times, the successive places qf'pcrigeal appearaiice, &c. 

 of any considerable number of those terrestrially revolving Bodies, 

 which I have proposed to name Satellitulce : which task, never- 

 theless, I believe it to be possible, to have accomplished, and that 

 the return, at certain Places, of certain Salelliltdce might be 

 foretold, with incomparably more certainty and exactness, than 

 the return of anyone of the numerouNCotnets or excentric Planets 

 of our System, can vet be foretold. 



In the mean time, the sixth of my Queries above, will I believe, 

 be found to suggest, aii important use of these shooting Stars 

 and Meteors, whether they really be Satellitulce with Orbits ca- 

 pable of determination, or not, viz. as luminous Signals, which 

 can be correctly and simultaneously observed, over a great pari 

 of' England and Wales, as the means, by frequent repetitions, of 

 accuratelij settling the Longitudes of Places on Land : or on the 

 other hand, of occasionally furnishing the true Time, to those 

 Persons knowing their Longitude, and being possessed of a good 

 Clock, who may not be furnished with a Transit or other In- 

 strument, requisite for obtaining their Time, 



Towards these desirable ends, I beg the liberty of earnestly re- 

 commending to the Council of the ylstronomical Society of Lon- 

 don, to take this subject into their serious consideration*, and 

 if it should be thought necessary, requesting the aid of the Board 

 of Longitude for pecuniary assistance, towards making and re- 



* I was glad to observe in the inaugural Speech of Sir Humphry Davy, 

 from the Chair of the Royal Society, reported in p. 1 51 , of your last volume, 

 the attention of the learned and ingenious pointed to this subject : — on which 

 for 20 years past, I have been endeavouring to arouse them; but hitherto 

 with few visible eflects, beyond occasioning some Electrician, someVolcanist, 

 or other Individual, in reality unacquainted with the subject, to dogmatize 

 thereon. 



cording 



