488 



METHODISTS. 



would see six times as many as one, and yet 

 lose a third or more of those that could be 

 seen by an indefinite number, especially when 

 the flights were generally faint. 



Mi 4 . D. Trowbridge states (American Journal 

 of Science, September, 1866), that at about 8 h 

 15 m p. M., July 26th, a bright red meteor flashed 

 out in Cygnus, moving rapidly with a blue 

 train, to the west time of flight, ^ to 1 sec- 

 ond and which certainly passed below some 

 cirro-stratus clouds that were so dense as 

 completely to, hide ordinary stars. 0. Behr- 

 mann, of Gottiugen, has stated also that, 

 on the 30th of July of the same year, meteors 

 were seen to come out of a thick cloud which 

 covered the entire sky, and was too dense to 

 allow of their being visible through it those 

 bodies appearing about 15 above the horizon, 

 leaving a visible path of 5 to 6, and vanishing 

 in about a half-second. The writer believed 

 that these meteors came within one mile of the 

 earth. An account of a meteor, which probably 

 exploded above the clouds, near Charleston, 

 S. 0., and over the sea, but which produced in 

 and near that city an extremely brilliant flash 

 of light, and a continuous reverberation not un- 

 like that of thunder, is found in the American 

 Journal of Science for March, 1866. 



At the meeting of the National Academy of 

 Sciences, at Northampton, August 8, 1866, 

 Professor Pierce read a paper on the " Origin 

 of the Solar Heat," in which he controverted 

 Mayer's theory of the source of such heat in a 

 conversion of mechanical force, that is, as 

 being kept up by a constant fall of meteoric 

 bodies into the sun. It is stated that the au- 

 thor of the paper favored, instead, the view of 

 the solar heat as originating in a slow conden- 

 sation of the matter of the sun. 



Meteorites. Descriptions and analyses of me- 

 teoric irons (period of fall unknown) found in 

 the territory of Colorado, are given in the 

 American Journal of Science, dates of Septem- 

 ber, 1866, and January, 1867; and some account 

 of the meteorite of Knyahinya, Hungary (June 

 9, 1866), in the same journal for November, 

 1866 ; and of the meteorites of Aumale, Al- 

 geria (August 25, 1865), in the number for 

 May, 1866. A communication in three parts 

 to the French Academy of Sciences, by M. 

 DaubrSe, entitled, " Synthetic Experiments rel- 

 ative to Meteorites : Points of agreement to 

 which they conduct, in reference to the form- 

 ation of those planetary bodies and to that of 

 the terrestrial globe," appears in the Comptes 

 Rendus, dates of January 29th, February 19th, 

 and March 19th, 1866. The American Journal 

 of Science for January, 1867, contains also a 

 "New Classification of Meteorites, with an 

 Enumeration of Meteoric Species," by Pro- 

 fessor Charles U. Shepard, the classification 

 differing in some particulars from that of Mr. 

 Greg, given in the preceding volume of the 

 CYCLOPEDIA. 



METHODISTS. I. Methodist Episcopal 

 Church. The membership of the Methodist 



Episcopal Church, in 1866, was, according tc 

 the Methodist Almanac for 1867, as follows : 



The number of annual conferences in the 

 above list is 64, against 60 reported last year. 



