ajid on Shooting Stars in general. 227 



teen degrees at this place, and if this observation were to be im- 

 pHcitly rehed upon, we must infer that the meteor was higher 

 than I have supposed, or that its path was farther to the east than 

 I have assigned it. The language of the observation, however, 

 is very vague, and I think it highly probable, that the observer 

 never saw the meteor so high as his language would naturally 

 imply, but inferred from its final direction that it must have ori- 

 ginated in that quarter. At Carroll, Chautauque county, N. Y., 

 a meteor was seen about dusk on the evening of the 18th. It 

 appeared first in the east, elevated 25 or 30 degrees above the 

 horizon, and disappeared in the north perhaps about 5° above the 

 horizon. All this accords sufficiently well with my results. In 

 one of the Canadian papers, the meteor is noticed as having been 

 seen in various places, but the observations are too vague to be 

 of the least value. I have received a vast number of observa- 

 tions from the counties of Ashtabula,, Trumbull, Geauga, Por- 

 tage, Cuyahoga, and Huron, all in the northeastern part of Ohio. 

 The observations agree about as well as could be expected, if 

 they had all been made from precisely the same station, with the 

 exception that the most eastern observations assign the meteor 

 somewhat the greatest altitude. The altitudes are almost with- 

 out exception given too great, and commonly twice too great. 

 The great variety of observations made in the vicinity of Hud- 

 son, although somewhat loose, must satisfy any one that the me- 

 teor was very distant and at a considerable elevation. No one 

 can believe that a hundred different meteors, all of them of the 

 most extraordinary kind, and characterized by the very same pe- 

 culiarities, should appear at the same absolute instant, within a 

 limited district, and all moving in such directions, and exhibiting 

 such appearances as would be presented by one large, remote, 

 and elevated meteor, while only a single meteor appeared to any 

 one of the numerous observers. The case seems too plain for 

 further argument. 



I have now, as appears to me, assigned such a position to the 

 meteor as reconciles all the observations within the limits of una- 

 voidable error. This determination is liable to some uncertainty ; 

 yet I believe the uncertainty is not so great as materially to affect 

 any theoretical conclusions to be deduced. 



Ijct us now inquire for the velocity of the meteor, as referred 

 to the earth's surface. The length of path seen at Hanover was 

 201 miles. The time of observation was estimated at eleven 



