218 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1/16. 



laminae. These did not show themselves all together, but came successively, 

 yet so as two or three of them were seen at a time; and as their coming was 

 instantaneous, so they went away in a moment. At the same time likewise, 

 the several little white columns marked f, f, f, f, occupied that part of the 

 space between the two streaks next to e, and by their sudden and very irregular 

 motion, and the vanishing of some, while others at the same time emerged, 

 gave occasion to the conception of those that fancied battles fought in the air. 

 Lastly, from about the middle of cd, there arose suddenly a cone or obelisk of 

 a pale whitish light, greater than any we had yet seen, as h ; which moving 

 from east to west, with a motion sufficiently regular, was translated to k, in 

 the north west, and there disappeared. 



That we might by the same scheme show the appearance of the last hours, 

 after midnight; the reader is desired to take notice that we have made the light 

 at Q much larger than what appeared in the west about 1 o'clock ; so as to 

 represent truly that other. In this case the point a must, by the imagination, 

 be supposed transferred to the intersection of the horizon and meridian under 

 the pole. And that we might the better be understood in what follows, we 

 have made this short recapitulation as annexed to, and explicative of, the 

 scheme, which could by no means be contrived to answer the wonderful variety 

 this phenomenon afforded; since even the eye of no one single observer, was 

 sufficient to follow it in the suddenness and frequency of its alterations. 



Thus far I have attempted to describe what was seen, and am heartily sorry 

 I can say no more as to the first and most surprising part thereof, which how- 

 ever frightful and amazing it might seem to the vulgar beholder, would have 

 been to me a most agreeable and wished-for spectacle; for I then should have 

 contemplated propriis oculis all the several sorts of meteors I remember to have 

 hitherto heard or read of This was the only one I had not as yet seen, and 

 of which I began to despair, since it is certain it has not happened to any 

 remarkable degree in this part of England since I was born : nor is the like 

 recorded in the English annals since the year of our Lord 1574, that is above 

 140 years since, in the reign of queen Elizabeth. Then, as we are told by 

 the historians of those times, Cambden and Stow, eye-witnesses of sufficient 

 credit, for two nights successively, viz. on the 14th and 15th of Nov. that 

 year, much the same wonderful phaenomena were seen, with almost all the 

 same circumstances as now. 



Nor indeed, during that reign, was this so rare a sight as it has been since. 

 For we find in a book entitled A Description of Meteors, reprinted at London 

 in the year l654, signed W. F. D.D. that the same thing, which the author 

 there calls Burning Spears, was seen at London on Jan. 30, 1560; and again 



