VOL. LXXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 5'2g 



terrestrial comets, is taken from their great velocity. A body falling from infinite 

 space toward the earth, would have acquired a velocity of no more than 7 miles 

 a second, when it came within 50 miles of the earth's surface; whereas these 

 meteors seem to move at least 3 times faster. And this objection, if there be 

 no mistake in regard to the velocity of the meteor, as I think there is not, abso- 

 lutely oversets the whole hypothesis. 



What then can these meteors be ? The only agent m nature with which 

 we are acquainted, that seems capable of producing such phenomena, is elec- 

 tricity.* I do not mean that by what is already known of that fluid, all the 

 difficulties relative to meteors can be solved, as the laws, by which its motions 

 on a large scale are regulated in those regions so nearly empty of air, can scarcely, 

 I imagine, be investigated in our small experiments with exhausted vessels ; but 

 only that several of the facts point out a near connexion and analogy with elec- 

 tricity, and that none of them are irreconcilable to the discovered laws of that 

 fluid. 



1. Electricity moves with such a prodigious velocity, as to elude all the at- 

 tempts hitherto made by philosophers to detect it ; but the swiftness of meteors, 

 stating it at 20 miles a second, is such as no experiments yet contrived could 

 have discovered, and which seems to belong to electricity alone. This is, per- 

 haps, the only case in which the course or direction of that fluid is rendered 

 perceptible to our senses, in consequence of the large scale on which these fire- 

 balls move. 



1. Various electrical phenomena have been seen attending meteors. Lambent 

 flames are described as settling on men, horses, and other objects; and sparks 

 coming from them, or the whole meteor itself, it is said, have damaged ships, 

 houses, &c. in the manner of lightning. These facts, I must own, are but 

 obscurely related, yet still they do not seem to be destitute of foundation. If 

 there be really any hissing noise heard while meteors are passing, it seems expli- 

 cable on no other supposition than that of streams of electric matter issuing 

 from them, and reaching the earth with a velocity equal to that of the meteor, 

 namely, in 2 or 3 seconds. Accordingly, in one of our late meteors, the hissing 

 was compared to that of electricity issuing from a conductor. The sparks flying 



* Since the above was written, other ways of accounting for these meteors have been discovered, 

 and such indeed as, agreeing very well with all the phenomena, seem to be a probable solution, or 

 at least a possible one ; which is far more than can be said of the notion from electricity, which 

 hardly agrees with any one of the numerous extraordinary circumstances attending these meteors, 

 which have been observed in many instances to be the same as die stony masses that have often fallen 

 through the atmosphere on many parts of the earth. For a particular account of such phenomena, 

 see our note at p. 100, &c. of vol. 6, of these abridgments. It is remarkable of the present large 

 meteor, that its calculated velocity is nearly equal to that of the earth in its annual motion in the 

 opposite direction. — Orig. 



vol. xv. 3 Y 



