OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS MBTEOES. 297 



Middlesbrough side of tlie first station on the line at Ormsby. The fall 

 -was witnessed by the permanent-Avay inspector, W. Ellinor, and three 

 platelayers engaged in repairing a switch-heel at the siding ; it was first 

 announced to them by a whizzing or rushing noise in the air, followed 

 in a second or two by a sudden blow of a body striking the ground not 

 far from them. A little search revealed the hole made by the stone at the 

 foot of the slight embankment of the south side of the line, about forty- 

 eight yards from the place where they had been working, and less than 

 twenty yards from the signal-box, in which the pointsman and one of the 

 platelayers were conversing, and the latter thought that a stone had 

 been thrown at the building by his companions outside, to attract his 

 attention. 



The direction of the wind, which was only a light air, was from N.B. ; 

 but it was fresh at Pinchingthorpe and neighbouring places in the district, 

 and it is, perhaps, on that account that no sound of a report in the air 

 accompanying the fall was heard either where the stone fell or at places 

 near it in the Guisbrough and Cleveland District, at Pinchingthorpe, 

 Hutton-Gate, Guisbrough, Maske, Saltburn, and Redcar, where informa- 

 tion on this point was requested from the station-masters of the railway 

 by one of the North-Eastern Railway Company's engineers of the Dar- 

 lington District, Mr. W. Cndworth. 



On the other hand, information sought and collected by Mr. W. R. 

 Smithson, of Northallerton, in the north-eastern part of Yorkshire, proved 

 that a considerable detonation was perceived, both at Northallerton and 

 four miles east of Northallerton (by himself ; eighteen miles S.S.W. from 

 Middlesbrough), and also at Welbury, twelve miles from Middlesbrough 

 in the same direction, and at Chopgate in Bidsdale, among the Cleveland 

 Hills, about ten miles S.S.B. from the place of fall. These scanty indi- 

 cations point apparently to a direction of the meteor's flight, if it was not 

 quite vertical, from some quarter in the south. But the direction of the 

 wind may have led to the distant au.dibility of the sound in the south- 

 west, and not in other parts of Yorkshire near the place of fall. 



At all these points the sound resembled the boom of a gun, or of a 

 gunpowder or boiler explosion in the distance, so loud as to be likened to 

 thunder at Northallerton, the furthest known point at which it was heard. 

 At Welbury, twelve miles from Middlesbrough, on the i^ailway between 

 that town and Northallerton, some platelayers heard it, and described it 

 as sufficiently forcible to shake the earth and a rail upon which one of 

 them was seated. It was not a solitary bounce, but a concussion, followed 

 by a soughing sound, and then by a second crash, resembling the tipping 

 of stones, or like an echo from rocks or woods when a gun is fired. The 

 direction of the first boom was, like that recorded at the other places by 

 pi'oper compass measurements, in the direction of Middlesbrough. But 

 tlie following crash is desci'ibed as coming from a different quarter, from 

 the east, or south-east, at Welbury, and it may either have been an echo 

 of the original sound among the Cleveland hills, a few miles east of Wel- 

 buiy, or perhaps an indication of an earlier part of the meteor's course 

 over the region of those hills due south from Middlesbrough, before the 

 final stoppage of its flight. 



Neither at the place of fall, nor at any other point of observation 

 where accounts were furnished, do any luminous or cloud-forming pheno- 

 mena of the fire-ball's passage in the air seem to have been seen, notwith- 

 standing the clear brightness of the sky which was everywhere reported 



