120 fN STARRY REALMS. 



dense darkness, and through a raging storm of snow. 

 An instantaneous transformation scene takes place. Sud- 

 denly there is light above and around which renders the 

 white mantle of the city as bright as a summer day. 

 The observer at once sees that this illumination is not 

 lightning. A flash of lightning lasts for an incon- 

 ceivably small fraction of a second. But while a man 

 could count fifty the town glows with this strange illu- 

 mination. And strange it is, for the source of the light 

 is not visible. As the snowstorm would have hidden the 

 sun itself at mid- day, so in the dead of night it hides the 

 great meteor. An exquisite phase of the phenomenon 

 was presented by the changes in the hue of the light, 

 which passed from a brilliant white to a beautiful blue ere 

 it disappeared. 



Perhaps the most remarkable instance of the explosion 

 of a meteor is recorded in the case of the great fire-ball so 

 widely observed in America on the 21st December, 1876. 

 The movements of this superb object have been carefully 

 studied by Professor H. A. Newton and Professor D. 

 Kirkwood. For the prodigious span of a thousand miles 

 this meteor tore over the American continent with a speed 

 of some ten or fifteen miles a second. It first appeared 

 over Kansas at a height of seventy-five miles. Thence it 

 glided over the Mississippi, over the Missouri ; it passed 

 to the south of Lake Michigan ; it made a short voyage 

 over Lake Erie, and it cannot have been very far from 

 the Falls of Niagara, when by becoming invisible all 

 further traces of its movements were lost. While passing 

 a point midway between Chicago and St. Louis a violent 

 explosion shivered the meteor into a cluster of brilliant 



