

GUERNSEY COUNTY (OHIO-) METEORITES. 323 



two seconds in continuance. A merchant of Marietta, happening to be at 

 dinner, suspected it was the explosion of a powder-magazine in his store 

 about a quarter of a mile distant. The Parkersburg News says 'the houses 

 shook as with an earthquake.' In the counties of Washington, Morgan, 

 Noble, Monroe, and Belmont, and in places along the Virginia side of the 

 Ohio Kiver from Parkersburg to Wheeling, those who were within doors very 

 generally attributed it to an earthquake. The windows rattled, and local 

 papers state that the door of an engine-house was jarred open at Bellair near 

 Wheeling. The lines of direction of the sound from all sides, as distinguished 

 by those who happened to be out of doors, cross each other in the southern 

 (not far from the central) part of Noble County, while the inhabitants of that 

 region thought it was overhead. Prof. Andrews, giving the results of per- 

 sonal inquiries, says: 'The people of the northern part of Noble County 

 heard it in a southern or south-eastern direction, and not in a north-western 

 direction toward New Concord.' At Zanesville, about twelve miles from 

 New Concord, the Courier described the noise, not as a succession of sounds, 

 but as an 'explosion.' These facts clearly indicate that the great detonation 

 heard at these various places was one and the same sound, and that it pro- 

 ceeded from a point over the interior of Noble County. The most probable 

 location is five or six miles south of Sarahsville. It was undoubtedly the first 

 produced, but the last heard of the successive sounds described as receding to 

 the south-east by witnesses in the neighborhood where the meteoric stones 

 fell, and it was compared by them to the roar of thunder." 



The time of the day and the number and intelligence of the 

 observers unite to give considerable interest and value to these 

 observations. While some of them show points of difference, 

 natural to the observation of sudden and startling phenomena, 

 we can yet deduce from them many conclusions with more or 

 less accuracy, thus : 



THE DIRECTION OF THE METEORITE. 



My own observations of two of the stones, which fell half a 

 mile apart, enable me to give the direction of the meteor with 

 some degree of exactness. The first of these stones struck the 

 end of the rails of a Virginia (zigzag) fence, half-way down, 

 just touching the middle rail, breaking off more and more of 

 each rail as it passed to the ground. Connecting the points 

 of fracture by a line, this line represents a descending curve 

 from south-east to north-west. 



Again, the stone that fell .at Law's (the most northerly) 

 struck a large dead tree lying on the side of a bill, sloping 

 north-west, passing through it as any projectile would ; it then 

 struck a small clump of elders, breaking them off at the root. 



