October 16, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



517 



is a few miles north of Boston. Tliis same 

 meteor was seen to pass over the city of 

 Springfield, about ninety miles west of Bos- 

 ton, and according to newspaper reports " its 

 glare lit up the earth as bright as day," " the 

 hissing of the fiery mass could be plainly 

 heard in some sections," it had " a white head 

 and a reddish tail of burning gases." The 

 Springfield accounts state that a few seconds 

 after its passage over that city it seemed to 

 explode into particles which were burned or 

 vaporized before falling to the earth. The 

 Boston account indicated that it parted high 

 up in the air, one piece dropping in a south- 

 westerly direction. The piece that fell into 

 the harbor is described as seeming to be of the 

 size of the full moon. " Several small boats," 

 so one account states, " were observed in the 

 vicinity when one piece dropped into the 

 ■water near Winthrop." It is unfortunate 

 that if this was the case, the exact spot of the 

 fall was not noted, as the water there is prob- 

 ably not more than a few feet deep, and the 

 fragment, heated (as svich bodies are) only 

 externally in their flight, might be found 

 almost intact in spite of its impact witTi the 

 water. Moreover, it is probable that its 

 velocity was well spent and that the water 

 resistance would so far reduce the speed that 

 it would not even bury itself in the earth 

 below. 



My personal observations in regard to this 

 meteor are as follows : While journeying east- 

 vrardly from the direction of Pittsfield to 

 Springfield with a party in an automobile we 

 followed the road which runs approximately 

 parallel to the Boston and Albany Railroad 

 tracks east of the town of Huntington. At 

 a point about a mile southeast of that town 

 and about eighteen miles west of Springfield, 

 with a clear sky but somewhat smoky air, we 

 were startled by a very bright illumination of 

 the landscape, like that given by an intense 

 flash of lightning though much more pro- 

 longed. On looking upward at once for the 

 cause, our attention was at once fixed upon a 

 brilliant body descending rapidly and almost 

 vertically, and apparently nearly overhead. 

 It appeared to fall into the woods on a hill 

 to the left of us. The light was remarkable 



as being of a pure and intense greenish blue, 

 which continiied at full intensity until the 

 mass was lost to sight in the woods. This 

 fragment of the larger mass which itself con- 

 tinued on east, appeared to me to owe its 

 luminosity to an actual combustion in our 

 air, as its velocity of fall was apparently 

 much too low for it to have been maintained 

 at a high temperature by air resistance. In 

 fact our first impression was that it was fall- 

 ing almost directly upon us or might strike 

 nearby; an impression confirmed by the ap- 

 pearance that although we were moving at 

 moderate speed along a straight part of the 

 road our horizontal direction of view was 

 changing quite rapidly with respect to its 

 line of descent. I am convinced that this 

 was no illusion. The vivid green blue color 

 of the light rendered the efl^ect very beautiful. 



It seems to indicate an unusual chemical 

 composition, something which readily burned 

 in the air and which at the same time gave a 

 pure light, spectrum lines in the green and 

 blue, or green-blue only. 



ELrau Ti^oMSON 



SWAMPSCOTT, Mass., 

 September 24, 1908 



DR. W. J. HOLLAND ON THE SKULL OF DIPLODOCUS 



In the second volume of the Memoirs of 

 the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg, page 225, 

 Dr. W. J. Holland has written at consider- 

 able length on the skeleton of Diplodocus. 

 Most of his original matter is based on the 

 well-preserved hinder part of a skull that was 

 found in Wyoming. On request Dr. Holland 

 kindly sent me this skull for examination, 

 and I have carefully compared it with the 

 skulls of various reptiles, living and extinct. 

 I regret that I find myself at variance with 

 Dr. Holland as regards many of his deter- 

 minations of bones and foramina in this 

 skull; but it is essential that errors in such 

 important matters be corrected as early as 

 possible. 



First of all it may be said that most of the 

 sutures between the bones are far less dis- 

 tinct than they are represented in Dr. Hol- 

 land's figures, and some of them do not ap- 

 pear to be where they are drawn. 



