40\ PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1740. 



peared to be about 20 feet long, and seemed to fall to the ground somewhere 

 about the kennel-garden, whither Mr. C. accompanied him in expectation of 

 finding some of those jellies which are supposed to owe their beings to such 

 meteors : but we might have searched long enough, as the next day, when Mr. 

 Edgcombe informed him, that he and another gentleman had seen the same 

 appearance at the same time about 15 miles from us, steering the same course 

 from east to the west, and vanished from them between Walkhampton and 

 Oakhampton : they gave the same account of its figure, length and colour. 



Of a Luminous Appearance in the Shy, seen at London on Thursday, March 1 3, 

 1734-5. By John Bevis, M. D. N^ 456, p. 347. 



When observing Mars near a small fixed star, then in the west, on the top 

 of his house in Buckingham-street, about 5 minutes after 8, equal time ; hap- 

 pening to turn his face southward, Dr. B. was surprised with an uncommon 

 bright glade of light. It was straight, about 2^ degrees broad, and 1 10 or 120 

 degrees long, ill defined at either end, but pretty well at the sides, much as the 

 common rainbow, or one of those pyramids which are used to dart up from the 

 horizon in an aurora borealis, which light it resembled in all respects, except in 

 its place and position, and that this was steady, and altogether without that 

 tremulous kind of motion, which usually accompanies that. Besides Saturn, 

 Mars, Venus, and the fixed stars, there was then no other light in the sky, nor 

 the least cloud, nor any of that horizontal blackness which we see northward in 

 the aurora. The stars were as discernible through it, as if nothing had been 

 there. A gentleman who was with the Doctor fancied it to be the tail of a 

 comet ; but as neither he nor the Doctor had ever seen one, he gave but little 

 heed to that conjecture: however, he carefully directed a 17-foot glass to all 

 parts of its western extremity, but could discern nothing like a nucleus. When 

 first seen, it extended from about the midway between Aldebaran, and Orion's 

 left shoulder, through Gemini a little under |3, and so on through Cancer and 

 Leo, just above Cauda Leonis, till it arrived between Vindematrix and Coma 

 Berenices, where it ended very dilutedly. In about half an hour it grew dim 

 about the middle, where in a short time it separated in two, or rather became 

 quite dark there ; then the disjoined parts were more luminous than before ; 

 but they too in a little while after grew dimmer, and shortened away, on to 

 their remote extremities, which remained visible the longest ; the western one 

 about 9 o'clock, the time of its extinction, being near Orion's right shoulder, 

 and the other near the left knee of Bootes ; so that this meteor seems pretty 

 nearly to have accompanied the earth in its diurnal motion, and to have had 



