266 Dr, Reynolds on Meteor i, 



PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY. 



Art. XI. Outline of a Theory of Meteors, 

 By Wm. G. Reynolds, M.D. Middletown Point, New- Jersey. 



>3H0ULD the progress of science, for a century to come, 

 keep pace with its rapid advancement for the last fifty years, 

 many appearances in the physical world, now enveloped in ob- 

 scurity, will then admit of as easy solution as the combustion 

 of inflammable substances, or any familiar process in chemis- 

 try does at this day. Among the many subjects from which 

 the veil of mystery would thus be raised, we may include 

 those luminous appearances, in the aerial regions, called me- 

 teors, which I am about to consider in the following essay ; 

 and which seem to constitute a distinct class of bodies of con- 

 siderable variety. 



Meteors were regarded by the ancients as the sure prognos- 

 tics of great and awful events in the moral and physical world ; 

 and were divided by them into several species, receiving 

 names characteristic of the various forms and appearances 

 they assumed ; but of their opinions, as to the physical cause 

 of these phenomena, the ancients have left us nothing solid or 

 instructive. The moderns, more enlightened, have ceased to 

 regard these bodies with the superstitious awe of former ages ; 

 but in respect to the cause thereof, are perhaps but little in ad- 

 vance of their predecessors, having, I believe, produced 

 nothing yet that will bear the test of philosophical investiga- 

 tion. 



Doctor Blagden (Philosophical Transactions, 1784,) considers 

 electricity as the general cause of these phenomena ; Doctor 

 Gregory, and others, think they depend upon collections of 

 highly inflammable matter, as phosphorus, phosphorated hy- 

 drogen, &c. being volatilized and congregated in the upper re- 



