OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 151 



were heard at Erie, and as -far east as Concord, in Pennsylvania. The 

 assigned durations of its flight varied from 15 seconds up to 3 minutes ; and 

 the speed with which it pursued its long nearly horizontal course above the 

 earth for a well-determined distance of nearly 1UU0 miles did not probably 

 much exceed 10 or 15 miles per second. Deducting a certain amount (for 

 the earth's gravitation) from the nearly horizontal altitude, 15° 8. from west, 

 from which its course was directed, the radiant-point freed from this zenithal 

 attraction was in the eastern or southern part of the constellation Capri- 

 cornus, a little south of the ecliptic, where no radiant-point of meteors at 

 the same time of the year appears to have been previously recorded. 



With many exact accounts from all points along its course from west to 

 east, Prof. Kirkwood has obtained yet more definite particulars of its real 

 path. Its first appearance, a little SJ3. of the zenith of Emporia in Kansas, 

 shows it to have begun its course in the S. W. corner of that (State at a height 

 which neighbouring observations make about 70 or 75 miles. When passing 

 the meridian of Bloomington its height, about over Rochester, was 38 miles, 

 and as seen from Wooster its height due north from that town over Lake 

 Erie must have been 29 miles. In its course over Pennsylvania Prof. Kirk- 

 wood conjectures from this that its height over that State cannot have much 

 exceeded between 25 and 30 miles ; and as after an explosion near the south- 

 western border of New York State it speedily became extinct, it appears 

 to be satisfactorily demonstrated that its real course as a fireball ceased here, 

 and that no particles of its mass can afterwards have escaped out of the 

 atmosphere, although only one small fragment, 12 oz. in weight, is known 

 to have fallen from the meteor. A farmer, 3 miles from Rochester (Indiana ), 

 heard this stony fragment fall in the snow (six inches deep), when he left his 

 house to ascertain the cause of the explosion. Returniug the next morning 

 to the spot, the meteorite was found close to the spot where it had first fallen 

 and rebounded. In structure it is pisolitic and friable, and from its com- 

 position Prof. Sheppard, to whom a portion of it was transmitted, concludes 

 that it resembles the meteorite of Pegu, which fell on December 27, 1857 

 (in two pieces about ten miles apart, as will be recollected from the accounts 

 and from the discussion of the occurrence of that stonefall which were pub- 

 lished by Prof. Maskelyne). 



The prodigious violence of the explosion may be gathered from the fact 

 that its sound and jar were heard and felt (and were by some attributed to 

 an earthquake) by hundreds in Monroe Co. round about Bloomington (Ind.), 

 at an interval of 15 minutes, as noted on a clock by one observer near 

 Bloomington, after the passage of the meteor. The corresponding distance, 

 accomplished with the ordinary speed of sound, is 185 miles, representing not 

 the nearest point, over Rochester and Wicamac, of the meteor's course, 135 

 miles from Bloomington, but a point over Peoria in Central Illinois, where 

 by far the greatest disruption of the meteor in its course must have taken place. 

 Speaking of the meteor's form after this disruption Prof. Kirkwood writes, 

 " When crossing Indiana [according to the exact descriptions at Blooming- 

 ton] the principal fireball was followed by a train or group of smaller meteors, 

 many of which were superior in apparent magnitude to Venus or Jupiter. 

 The breadth or apparent diameter of this cluster, as seen from Bloomington, 

 was 3 degrees, and its length at least 20 degrees. Its true diameter was 

 therefore five miles, and its length about forty miles. These smaller meteoi j 

 were chiefly the results of the explosion over Central Illinois. A final dis, • 

 ruption occurred over Erie County, Pennsylvania, several minor explosions 

 having taken place during the passage over Indiana and Ohio." 



