JOO PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1714. 



and the like may be concluded from the altitude it appeared in at Redgrave, 

 near 70 miles distant. Though at this great distance, it appeared to move with 

 an amazing velocity, darting, in a very few seconds of time, for about 12 

 degrees of a great circle from north to south, being very bright at its first appear- 

 ance, and it died away at the end of its course, leaving for some time a pale 

 whiteness in the place, with some remains of it in the track where it had gone ; 

 but no hissing sound as it passed, or explosion were heard. 



It may deserve the honourable Society's thoughts, how so great a quantity of 

 vapour should be raised to the very top of the atmosphere, and there collected, 

 so as upon its accension, or otherwise illumination, to give a light to a circle of 

 above 100 miles diameter, not much inferior to the light of the moon ; so as 

 one might see to take a pin from the ground in the otherwise dark night. It is 

 hard to conceive what sort of exhalations should rise from the earth, either by 

 the action of the sun or subterranean heat, so as to surmount the extreme cold 

 and rareness of the air in those upper regions: but the fact is indisputable, and 

 therefore requires a solution.* 



* Here again Dr. Halley's mind fixes on nothing but vapour or exhalations, to solve the appear- 

 ance ; though the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of conceiving how any exhalations could be 

 raised so high, ought to have hinted the idea of some other origin. Later observations however 

 have induced a belief that these luminous appearances are allied to, if not the same as the stones 

 which have frequently been known to fall from the atmosphere, at different times, and in all parts 

 of the earth. Seveial of the phsenomena are common to both. These luminous bodies are seen to 

 move with very great velocities, in oblique directions descending; commonly with a loud hissing 

 noise, resembling that of a mortar shell, or cannon ball, or rather that of an irregular hard mass 

 projected violently through the air ; surrounded by a blaze or flame, tapering off to a narrow stream 

 in the hinder part of it ; are heard to explode or burst, and seen to fly in pieces, the larger parts 

 going foremost, and the smaller following in succession j are thus seen to fall on the earth, and 

 strike it with great violence j that on examining the place of the fall, the parts are found scattered 

 about, being still considerably warm, and most of them entered the earth several inches deep. 

 After so many facts and concurring circumstances, it is difficult to refuse assent to the identity of the 

 two phaenomena : indeed it seems now not to be doubted, but generally acquiesced in. And hence 

 it is concluded, that every such meteor-like appearance is attended by the fall of a stone, or of stones, 

 though we do not always see the place of the fall, nor discover the stones. 



This conclusion however has contributed nothing towards discovering the origin of the pheno- 

 menon, at least as to its generation in the atmosphere : on the contrar}', it seems still more difficult 

 to account for the production of stones, than gaseous meteors, in the atmosphere, as well as to in- 

 flame and give them such violent motion. In fact, it seems concluded as a thing impossible to be 

 done, or conceived; and philosophers have given up the idea as hopeless. This circumstance has in- 

 duced them to endeavour to discover some other cause or origin for these phaenomena. But no idea 

 that is probable, or even possible, has yet been started, excepting one, by the very celebrated mathe- 

 matician Laplace, and that of so extraordinary a nature, as to astonish us with its novelty, and bold- 

 ness of conception. This is no less than the conjecture that these stony masses are projected from 

 the moon ! a conjecture which none but an astronomer could have made, or at least have shown to 



