404 On the Meteors of 1 Sth JVovembcr. 



a few miles north west, and by Dr. Lee at New Britain, a few miles 

 north east, of New Haven, and by Lieutenant Crane at West Point. 

 On the supposition of the identity of the body seen by these dif- 

 ferent observers some attempts have been made, both by Mr. Twi- 

 ning and myself, t6 estimate its height. The calculations are not yet 

 sufficiently matured to be submitted to the public. The result al- 

 ready obtained, however, leads us to believe that even the point at 

 which the trains were formed, was many miles above the earth. 

 Should it appear probable, that the small clouds or nebulae into which 

 many of these fire balls were finally resolved, were actually borne 

 eastward by the wind, as they appeared to be, it would be an inte- 

 resting and instructive fact, in respect to the height to which the wind 

 that prevails at the surface of the earth sometimes extends into the 

 atmosphere. 



Were the trains and nebulae merely smoke, pmduced by the com- 

 bustion of the meteors from which they resulteo^ rendered luminous 

 by being elevated above the earth's shadow into the region of the 

 sun's light ? 



The few remarkable bodies, which are described, as remaining 

 for a long time stationary in a particular part of the heavens, present 

 anomalies which even conjecture is hardly competent to reach. We 

 shall require more specific facts before we can attempt an expla- 

 nation. 



4. The sounds supposed to have been heard by a few observers, 

 are (with the exception of the loud explosion said to have been heard 

 off Charleston,) represented either as a hissing noise, like the rush- 

 ing of a sky rocket, or as slight explosions like the bursting of the 

 same bodies. These comparisons occur too uniformly, and in too 

 many instances, to permit us to suppose that they were either imagin- 

 ary or derived from extraneous sources. 



5. It is obvious that a great variety of circumstances might influ- 

 ence the direction of the meteors. On the supposition that they de- 

 scended from the higher regions of the atmosphere merely by the 

 force of gravity, if they had fallen from a small height like drops of 

 rain, they would have appeared to proceed from the zenith of 

 the spectator upon well known principles of perspective. If they 

 had fallen from a great height in the upper regions of the atmos- 

 phere, they would have had a tendency eastward by their own iner- 

 tia, the velocity of diurnal motion being greater in the upper re- 

 gions of the atmosphere than at the surface of the earth. Their di- 



