CHAP. 7. 5. OP ELECTRICITY. 221 



particular circumstances under which this rare 

 phaenomenon takes place, are as yet obscure. 



Cavallo attributed the fiery Meteors described 

 in another place to Electricity. As I have 

 already spoken of these phaenomena, it is 

 unnecessary to add much more. I only observe, 

 that there is this difference between Meteors 

 and electric communications, that the former 

 occupy some time in their passage, whereas 

 electric communications are instantaneous ; that 

 is, they take place in no perceivable time.* 



The variety too in the composition of the 

 light of Meteors, their scintillations, and the 

 prismatic colours sometimes observed in the 

 tails of the larger sort, are circumstances which 

 do not appear to me analogous to any known 

 electrical phaenomena. 



Dr. Blagden, in the Phil. Trans.^ observes, 



* There is this difference in the motion of the brilliant and 

 larger kind of Falling Stars or Meteors, and the other two 

 kinds, which I have called the stellar and the caudate. The 

 brilliant Meteors of summer evenings have sometimes a 

 curvilinear motion ; whereas the other two sorts always move 

 nearly straight : though as far as I can observe, with different 

 inclinations to the horizon, on different occasions. 



t Phil. Trans. Ixxiv. 208. Some observations on geometri- 

 cal measurement, by means of observations on Falling Stars, 

 are recorded in the Phil. Mag. for 1822. 



