MO KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



cent, but by the taxation bill this is decreased at least to 7 per cent, and it may- 

 be to still less. As mining operations are in their very nature a matter of faith, and 

 •of sight, the disastrous results to the mining industry of the State passing such a 

 law will be readily conjectured. One such was passed in Nevada, and capital 

 went to other fields of investment at once. The spirit of the Colorado press and 

 people is strongly against the bill and may prevail on the Governor to veto it. 



F. E. S. 



ASTRONOMY. 



METEORS AND COMETS. 



The fifth of Prof. Charles A. Young's illustrated lectures was delivered in 

 the Church of the Strangers last night. The subject was " Meteors and Comets," 

 and the learned lecturer made his audience acquainted with a great deal of astro- 

 nomical information in a very entertaining way. A great variety of views were 

 displayed on the screen, and the explanations of them were couched in terms 

 easily understood by all attentive listeners. Prof. Young held in his hand a small 

 grayish stone with a black crust as he ascended the platform to begin his lecture. 

 He said that it was a piece of a large stone, weighing forty pounds, which fell 

 from the sky in February, 1857, at Parnallee, in Southern India. The falling of 

 .meteoric stones was usually accompanied by loud reports, which to the startled 

 hearers seemed to last fifteen or twenty minutes. Prof. Young said it was not 

 probable that any such reports ever lasted more than two minutes. There had 

 been numerous instances of the falling of meteoric stones in this country, one of 

 the most remarkable of which was the falling of about 1,000 pounds of stone at 

 Weston, Conn., December 14, 1807. In the cabinet of Amherst College there 

 is treasured a meteoric stone which weighs 450 pounds. 



A person seeing a meteor fall at night at first sees a ball of fire about the 

 size of the moon. As the meteor approaches the earth, the Hght grows larger 

 and brighter, like the head-light of a locomotive. Generally, a train of light 

 follows the ball of fire. The falling of meteors is accompanied by loud explo- 

 sions, and it has been claimed that these explosions occur at intervals when only 

 portions of the meteor fall, while the main body passes on. Meteors first appear 

 in the sky at a distance of eighty or ninety miles from the earth, and they disap- 

 pear from view when at a distance of seven miles from the earth. They move 

 through space at the rate of ten miles a second, and sometimes with a velocity of 

 forty or fifty miles per second. There is not a single element in the composition 

 of meteoric stones that is not found in the earth. The substance of the meteors, 

 however, is put together differently, so that their mineralogy is unlike the miner- 

 alogy of the stones of the earth. Meteors are known to be heated when they 

 reach the earth, but on one occasion, a meteoric stone, when dug out of the 



