404 On the Meteors of 13th November. 
a few miles north west, and by Dr. Lee at New Britain, a few miles 
north east, of New Haven, and by Lieutenant Crane at West Point. 
On the supposition of the identity of the body seen by these dif- 
ferent observers some attempts have been made, both by Mr. Twi- 
ning and myself, to estimate its height. The calculations are not yet 
sufficiently matared to be submitted to the public. The result al- 
ready obtained, however, leads us to believe that even the point at 
which the trains were formed, was many miles above the earth. 
Should it appear probable, that the small clouds or nebule into which 
many of these fire balls were finally resolved, were actually borne 
eastward by the wind, as they appeared to be, it would be an inte- 
resting and instructive fact, in respect to the height to which the wind 
that prevails at the surface of the earth sometimes extends into the 
atmosphere. 
Were the trains and nebule merely smoke, ihel by the com- 
bustion of the meteors from which they resulted, rendered luminous 
by being elevated sess the earth’s shadow into the region of the 
sun’s light ? 
The few remarkable bodies, which are described, as remaining 
for a long time stationary in a particular part of the heavens, present 
anomalies which even conjecture is hardly competent to reach. We 
shall require more specific facts before we can attempt an — 
nation. 
4, The sounds supposed to have been heard by a few sbeerlers, 
are (with the exception of the loud explosion said to have been heard 
off Charleston,) represented either as a hissing noise, like the rush- 
ing of a sky rocket, or as slight explosions like the bursting of the 
same bodies. These comparisons occur too uniformly, and in too 
"many instances, to permit us to suppose that they were either imagin-_ 
ary or derived from extraneous sources. 
.5. It is obvious that a great variety of circumstances might influ- 
ence the direction of the meteors. On the supposition that they de- 
scended from the higher regions of the atmosphere merely by the 
force of gravity, if they had fallen from a smal] height like drops of 
rain, they would have appeared to proceed from the zenith of 
the spectator upon well known principles of perspective. If they 
had fallen from a great height in’ the upper regions of the atmos- 
phere, they would have had a tendency eastward by their own iner- 
tia, the velocity of diurnal motion being greater in the upper re- 
gions of the atmosphere than at the surface of the earth. ‘Their di- 
