420 METEOKOLOCtIOAL report, 1869, 



quite sure as to the time of the occurrence to a minute, because, 

 although I could not see to read my watch at the moment (a 

 chronometer on which I can depend, and which I know was 

 right), I hastened to the nearest light, about 400 yards distant, 

 when I ascertained that the time was one minute to seven, which, 

 allowing four minutes for walking 400 yards, would make the 

 time of the appearance five minutes to seven,... A co-observer, 

 Mr. J. A. Cayley, in the neighbourhood of Bristol, witnessed 

 the phenomenon at a distance of 260 miles from where I saw 

 it in Northumberland. As viewed by him it appeared to de- 

 scend from the zenith to about 20° above the western horizon, 

 while I, as already stated, saw it in the south. His description 

 of the meteor differs from mine only in regard to the train, which 

 is described as continuing visible to him for fifteen minutes, a 

 difference which may be attributed to its being nearer and more 

 overhead to him than to me. 



" I will not hazard even an approximate calculation of distance 

 from the data I have given, but I confess my inability to recon- 

 cile the different angles under which this object was seen at 

 opposite ends of a base line, having Bristol at one end and 

 Rothbury at the other, with the supposition that its height did 

 not exceed that which is ordinarily assigned to the atmosphere. 



" At all events, if the atmosphere exists at the height of this 

 meteor, it will be more attenuated than in the exhausted receiver 

 of the most perfect air-pump, and it is difficult to conceive how 

 air so rarified can so oppose the flight of a solid body as to pro- 

 duce the intense ignition exhibited in a meteor. Yet it seems 

 impossible to attribute the incandescence of these bodies to any 

 other cause than the resistance opposed by the atmosphere to 

 to their prodigious velocity." 



Wallington. — This was a cold month. Frost on sixteen nights. 

 The lowest reading of the thermometer was on the 10th, when 

 15° of frost were recorded. There were several strong gales of 

 wind. Snow fell on the 28th. 



Whitfield. — The temperature was below 32° on twenty- one 

 nights. The coldest night was the 29th, when the mercmy fell 



