403 



during every moment of its flight, to a continuous discharge, 

 at one moving point, of the most intense electric light, and 

 equally impressed with the absolute want of any solidity, or 

 power of conveying to the senses any notion of weight or mo- 

 mentum, which the body suggested. May it not ultimately, 

 then, be found, that these strange apparitions are but another 

 form of electric discharge, in restoring the equilibrium of this 

 great cosmical force in the higher regions of our atmosphere, 

 of which we already know two other forms, at least in light- 

 ning and the aurora, and a third, that of the fire-ball, has been 

 described by Arago {Annuaire for 1838) ? Although hundreds 

 of square miles of oppositely electrified cloud, or of strata of 

 air, come at once within striking distance, yet the lightning 

 flash starts out from one to the other but at a single point of 

 space. Why may not then the electric discharge take place 

 along a line of successive points ? If so, many of the hitherto 

 observed phenomena of meteors would be presented by this 

 continuous or sustained blaze of lightning moving along the 

 line in which was the locus of all the successive points of 

 discharge. 



" A good deal might be stated in rendering more probable 

 this notion, by considering the prevailing direction of observed 

 motion of meteors, and the periods of the year at which their 

 occurrence has been most frequent ; but I forbear for the pre- 

 sent to enlarge upon it. 



" I have only to add to the preceding observations, that 

 on going to Killiney Hill at half-past 7 o'clock on the morn- 

 ning of the 2nd November, I passed through and got above a 

 singular fog which lay perfectly at rest up to about half the 

 height of the hill, and was seen enveloping Howth to about 

 two-thirds of its height, with a keen and perfectly level upper 

 surface, from which we emerged as from an opaque fluid. 



" That on coming into town at half-past 5 o'clock in the 

 evening of the same day, after having seen the meteor, we 

 plunged suddenly at the River Dodder into a similarly dense 



