133 Weston Meteorite of Dec. U, 1807. 



town of Poiindridge, Westchester County, N. Y.* The fragments 

 which fell, doubtless lie buried somewhere in that region, — to be 

 discovered, perhaps, in future ages. The larger part of the me- 

 teor appears to have passed on, in its path around the sun. The 

 size of the meteor can be ascertained in the present instance with 

 about as much certainty as in most similar cases. Respecting 

 this particular there is always abundant room for fallacious results. 

 The observer is commonly too unskillful to make a just com- 

 parison of the angular size of the meteor with that of any celes- 

 tial body ; and he is moreover, without being conscious of it, 

 often prone to exaggeration. He rarely sees the bare nucleus, 

 but only the envelope of flame and sparks, and that, greatly en- 

 larged by irradiation. Hence, there is danger of making the size 

 of the body much too large, especially when the calculation is 

 based on observations taken at the distance of 50 or 100 miles. 

 The nearer the observer is to the meteor, the less is the probabil- 

 ity of error in this respect. In the present instance, an estimate 

 of the apparent size of the meteor by an observer at North Bran- 

 ford, (nearly 40 miles from the place of explosion,) would make 

 the diameter of the meteor ten or twelve times as great as that re- 

 sulting from the observations at Wilton, only about six miles from 

 the place of explosion. The data from Wilton make the diameter 

 of the meteor about 150 feet, and it was probably a little less than 

 this. The distant observations on the apparent size of the me- 

 teor must be rejected. 



O71 the velocity of the Weston Meteorite. 



The meteor which cast down stones in several places in and 

 about Weston in this State, on the morning of Monday, Decem- 

 ber 14, 1807, excited uncommon attention far and wide, and full 

 accounts of its interesting phenomena, were published in the 

 highly valuable memoirs of Professors Silliman and Kingsley.f 

 and of Dr. Bowditch.| To the elaborate calculations of the lat- 



* I did not succeed in obtaining any observations on tliis meteor from the State of 

 New York, but I was not able to make thorough inquiry in that quarter. 



t Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. ti, 323; Mem. Conn. Acad, i, 141; Med. Repos. xi, 

 202. See also a pajjer in the Churchman's Monthly Mag. New Haven, v, 35 ; ac- 

 count by Messrs Bronson and Holley in N. Y. ' Spectator, Jan. 2, 1808 ; Med. 

 Repos., XI, 418; ib. xiv, 194, (1811.) 



t Mem. Amer. Acad, iii, 213. 



