Falling Stars and Meteorites. 163 



amount or less, the largest being* furthest in the direction in 

 which the meteor was passing. All these stones were angular. 

 These phenomena occurred in the Northern States of North 

 America. 



On the 20th July, in the same year, two meteors were ob- 

 served, both exceedingly brilliant ; one apparently moving from 

 east to west, another from west to east. The latter was seen 

 over a length of 1000 miles of North America, shortly before 

 ten o'clock at night. It is thus described : — " At first a single 

 ball, it afterwards divided into two in about three minutes, 

 the breaking up being accompanied by a report, and followed 

 by a train of sparks and fire. Its colour was blueish ; it was 

 very brilliant, moved extremely slowly, and seemed almost to 

 traverse the entire heavens ; it seemed very near when almost 

 overhead. Its absolute velocity in space was calculated to have 

 been twenty- six miles a second." At its nearest approach to 

 the earth it was calculated to be about forty miles distant. The 

 distance of the first ball from the second, after dividing, was 

 estimated at two miles. 



In other parts of the world similar wonders have been de- 

 scribed. Thus, on the 28th July, in the same year, in the 

 north-eastern part of Lahore, in India, a series of shocks and 

 explosions took place in the air, followed by flames (?) of fire 

 and a great shower of meteoric stones, which ploughed up 

 the earth. 



Near home such events also occur. Thus, on the 5th of 

 November, 1851, at half-past five in the afternoon of a clear clay, 

 a brilliant fire-ball was seen high up in the air near Tarragona, 

 in Spain, and in the neighbourhood, over a distance of sixty 

 miles. It had a luminous tail, which changed to a misty cloud, 

 and lasted twenty minutes. Forty seconds after the fire-ball 

 had disappeared a tremendous noise was heard, and many 

 stones fell. One was picked up weighing 19^ lbs., and others 

 smaller. They were picked up hot, and were coated with a 

 black crust. 



Such balls of fire bursting with loud reports, and connected 

 with falls of stones reaching the earth, and subsequently found 

 where they were supposed to have fallen, are comparatively 

 rare, involving, as they do, the complete history of an event 

 which always happens unexpectedly, and which generally 

 astonishes and alarms too much to admit of careful investiga- 

 tion. But although not common, they recur constantly ; few 

 years pass by without a record of something of the kind, and 

 each particular case presents its own peculiar phenomena, while 

 assisting in some measure to clear away some of the difficulties 

 experienced in the endeavour to account for them. 



As a further illustration of similar phenomena seen in Eng- 



