272 Dr, Reynolds on Meteors, 



tions of electricity. Clouds of opposite electricities will ap- 

 proach each other and explode, by the positive imparting as 

 much electrical fire to the negative cloud as will make them 

 equal, when just as much water as the imparted fire held in 

 solution, will be set at liberty and descend +:• the earth. If, 

 however, this solution be deemed inapplicable, perhaps the 

 following may be admitted. Thus, when heat is urged upon 

 incombustible* bodies with a force that overcomes the cohe- 

 sive property by which their particles are tied together, it 

 imites with them in large quantities, and becomes latent, by 

 which union they are reduced to the state of elastic fluids ; 

 and as it is a universal property of heat to counteract the gra- 

 vitating force of bodies, these compounds must necessarily be- 

 come volant, and ascend as above stated. It is only thermo- 

 metrical or sensible heat, that destroys the attraction of cohe- 

 sion existing between the particles of bodies, the repulsive 

 power of latent heat being barely able to counteract this pro- 

 perty, when the elements under its dominion are removed be- 

 yond a certain distance from each other ; now the very redu- 

 ced temperature in the high regions to which these gaseous 

 clouds will ascend, may admit their earthy and metallic parti- 

 cles within the sphere of cohesive or aggregative attraction, 

 when the caloric will be expelled like water from a sponge, 

 accompanied by all the phenomena above stated. 



The third general head of my subject leads me to inquire 

 into the constituent principles of meteoric stones : sundry pa- 

 pers on the analysis of these productions, have been furnished 

 us by chemists of acknowledged reputation and ability, and in 

 none of these that I have seen, was there any element de- 

 scribed that had not been previously known. But should it 

 hereafter be found that air stones contain matters not found on 

 our globe, the fact will afford no absolute proof of the foreign 

 origin of these stones, as we are successively discovering 

 earthy and metallic principles of distinct characters from those 

 already known. 



* Perhaps there is no body in nature absolutely incombustible, but I use tht 

 term here in comnaon acceptation. 



