36 



REPORT — 1861. 



which I shall in due course place before the students and fellow-mem- 

 bers of my class. I could even have delayed my present communication 

 respecting the fall itself until then, as no accounts of it are to be found in 

 any European book. 



xlccording to Mr. H. S. Taylor's account, the two stones fell a little north- 

 east of the village of Parnallee, 9° 14' N. and 78° 21' east of Greenwich, ac- 

 cording to the map of the Government Survey. According to the direction 

 of the hole which they made in striking the ground, they came from about 

 N. 10° W. inclining to the perpendicular at an angle of from 15° to 20°, the 

 smaller one nearly perpendicular. They were fixed in the ground in such 

 a manner that that part of the surface which was the most rounded or convex 

 was placed towards the bottom ; this was, as Mr. Taylor expressly states, 

 in accordance with the centre of gravity, and therefore the very position which 

 the meteorites had to take in passing through the resisting atmosphere. The 

 larger stone struck into the ground in a ploughed field to the depth of 2 

 feet 5 inches, the smaller one to the depth of 2 feet 8 inches ; the smaller 

 one had not the appearance as if it Were a fragment of the larger one ; the 

 specific weight of the smaller one is, according to Taylor, 3'3. The larger 

 stone when grown moist showed on the round surface a crack, which after- 

 wards became still wider, pei'haps in consequence of oxidation : the report 

 caused by its fall was considered terrible by the natives, like two thunder- 

 claps as one stone struck into the ground after the other; and the echo lasted 

 for some time, although that was not so loud. They were heard as far as 

 Tuticorin, to the south, on the coast of the Gulf of Manaar, at a distance of 

 forty English miles ; very loud at Madura, which is sixteen miles off. 



Several persons were near the spot when the fall took place, and yet nobody 

 saw either of these large bodies as they fell, owing, as they think, to the velo- 

 city of the motion. A cloud of dust rose from the places where they struck 

 the ground ; Mr. Taylor could still see the hollow which had been caused in 

 the compressed earth. Up to the 21st of April, when he examined the 

 locality and obtained the stones, there had been no fall of rain. 



Their shape, although somewhat irregular, is compared to large cannon-balls 

 covered with a black crust as if smoked, in the interior like granite, with 

 particles of iron. Taking into account the short time during which the phe- 

 nomenon lasted, the fact of the stones striking into the ground without any 

 one having seen them approaching in the atmosphere, all this might tend to 

 show that the ground was struck by a real " horizontal shot." 



M. Haidinger,of Vienna, recommends as convenient in certain cases that the 

 observed apparent tracks or paths 

 of meteors should be approximately 

 mapped down, on the principle of a 

 Mercator's chart, and that the alti- 

 tude and geographic orientation ^''°l ' ^t^ ' ' '^"^ 



should be carefully inscribed in a 



diagram like the annexed figure, in 



order afterwards to be able, by com- 30° | "~ | f ' I 1 3oo 



parison with the precise time, hour, 



day, and year, to find the point from 



whence they were coming. A B 



would be the track of a meteor seen ^- ^•^- ^- ^■^- ^■ 



first at A at an altitude of 75° in the N.N.E., and disappearing or bursting 



at an altitude of about 40° ; while C D might denote a meteor that seemed 



to move horizontally from 45° N.E. to 45° S.E., its true course being from 



H. 



