On the Meteors of I'^th JVovember. 355 



many accounts would be sent you (or inserted in the public papers) 

 from various parts of New England, that any thing from this place 

 would be unnecessary. But 1 noticed a few facts in respect to this 

 phenomenon, which I have not yet seen in any published accounts, 

 and which seem to me to have an important bearing upon its expla- 

 nation. I shall dwell chiefly upon these peculiar circumstances, since 

 the general facts, as observed here, corresponded to those noticed in 

 nearly every other place. 



Many years ago I was exceedingly interested in Mr. Ellicott's ac- 

 count of a similar meteoric appearance which he saw near the edge 

 of the Gulf Stream in 1799, which is inserted in the 6th Vol. of the 

 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. And the en- 

 quiry had frequently suggested itself to me, whether it might not have 

 been an electro-magnetic phenomenon ? His account and this en- 

 quiry were brought vividly to my recollection, only a {ew days pre- 

 vious to the 13th instant, by conversation with a friend : and when 

 I saw the phenomenon so soon afterwards, my first thought was, can 

 I discover in the direction in which those meteors move — as can be 

 done in the corruscations of the aurora borealis, — any relation to 

 the plane of the magnetic meridian ? I directed my attention to such 

 as I saw moving nearly north, — and they did not exactly coincide 

 in direction with the meridian of the place, but, as nearly as I could 

 judge by the eye, made an angle with it on the west side from 5° to 

 J0° ; thus agreeing almost exactly with the plane of the magnetic me- 

 ridian ; the variation of the magnetic needle being here, about 6° 

 west. It was obvious that none of the meteors in the northern part 

 of the heavens described curves coincident with vertical circles, and 

 that these curves, if prolonged so as to cut the horizon, made the 

 angle of intersection on the left hand upper side greater than 90°, 

 and less on the right hand upper side. Such effects would result, if 

 the meteors in their motion had respect to the direction of the mag- 

 netic needle, or were great circles of a sphere produced by the re- 

 volution of the plane of the magnetic meridian about the needle pro- 

 longed as an axis. 



I had not yet noticed that the meteors all radiated from a point a 

 little south of the zenith. I estimated the distance of that point from 

 the zenith to be from 10° to 15°, and that it was a little east of 

 south. Now the dip of the needle at this place is about 16^. Can 

 there be any doubt then, that the point from which these meteors 

 proceeded, corresponded to that spot in the dome of heavens to which 



