bll PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. [ANNO 1784. 



that the light of most part of the tail is of so inferior a kind, as to be difficultly 

 perceived at a great distance, especially when the eye is dazzled by the over- 

 powering brilliancy of the body. The length and shape of the tail however were 

 perpetually varying ; nor did the body continue always of the same magnitude 

 and figure, but was sometimes round, at other times elliptical, with a blunt or 

 pointed protuberance behind. From such changes of figure in this and other 

 meteors it is, that they have been compared to columns or pyramids of fire, 

 comets, barrels, bottles, flasks, paper-kites, trumpets, tadpoles, glass-drops, quoits, 

 torches, javelins, goats, and many other objects ; whence the multifarious ap- 

 pellations given to them by the ancients were borrowed. 



Respecting the tails of meteors, it is here necessary to distinguish between 1 

 different parts of which they consist. The brightest portion seems to be of the 

 same nature as the body, and indeed an elongation of the matter composing it ; 

 but the other, and that commonly the largest portion, might more properly be 

 called the train, appearing to be a matter left behind after the meteor has passed; 

 it is far less luminous than the former part, and often only of a dull or dusky red 

 colour. A similar train or streak is not unfrequently left by one of the common 

 falling stars, especially of the brighter sort; and vestiges of it sometimes re- 

 main for several minutes. It often happens, that even the large fire-balls have 

 no other tail but this train, and this of the 1 8th of August appeared at times to 

 be in that state ; its tail was thought by some spectators to be spiral. 



Under this changeable form, but still as a single body, it proceeded regularly 

 till a certain period, when expanding with a great increase of light, it separated 

 into a cluster of smaller bodies or ovals, each extended into a tail and producing a 

 train. At the same time a great number of sparks appeared to issue from it in 

 various directions, but mostly downward, some of which were so bright as also to 

 leave a small train. Most fire-balls have suffered a bursting or explosion of this 

 kind; but in general they have been thought to disappear immediately afterwards. 

 This however continued its course, becoming more compact, or perhaps re- 

 uniting, and seems to have undergone other similar explosions before it left our 

 island, and again on the continent. The different accounts tend to show, that 

 its first separation or bursting happened somewhere over Lincolnshire, perhaps 

 near the commencement of the fens. It is observable, that the great change in 

 this meteor corresponds with the period in which it suffered a deviation from its 

 course, as if there was some connexion between those two circumstances ; and 

 there are traces of something of the same kind having happened to other meteors. 

 If the explosion be any sort of effort, we cannot wonder that the body should be 

 moved by it from a straight line ; but on the other hand it seems equally probable, 

 that if the meteor be forced, by any cause, to change its direction, the conse- 

 quence should be a division or separation of its parts. 



