On the Eaplosion of a Meteor. . 1538 
heard by Mrs Corbet and several members of my family who 
were at the time in the flower-garden ; they all exclaimed “ Is 
- that thunder ? for there is not a cloud to be seen.” Some phea- 
sants in the plantation adjoining immediately made the same 
ery that they usually doin thunder. I should state that this 
house is distant at least 27 or 28 miles from the spot where 
the ball of fire is said to have exploded. At the same time 
the noise was heard here, one of my daughters was riding 
with her uncle, Sir Andrew Corbet, about half a mile from 
his house ; on hearing it, he exclaimed, “ Good heavens, my 
house is blown up.” My brother’s house, Acton Reynald, is 
at least 11 miles from the scene of the explosion. We were 
all at a loss to conjecture the cause of this peculiar report, 
till the following paragraph appeared in our Shrewsbury 
paper of Wednesday, March 15th :— 
“On Ash- Wednesday a ball of fire visited us, and made such 
a noise amongst us, that your silence convinces me that you 
neither heard it nor heard of it, else you would have reported 
its report. Allow me, please, to give you this best account 
I can gather from the eye-witnesses. It was a beautiful, 
clear, mild day, and the sky was cloudless, when about half- 
past four in the afternoon, the ball of fire was seen moving, 
apparently about a yard above the ground, in a direction 
from west or cast; it seemed to be eight or nine inches in 
diameter and to have a tail behind it. Between the Marsh 
and the Half-way House it burst, dividing, as the more 
credible of the witnesses says, into three pieces of unequal 
size; others speak of it as splitting into a thousand pieces. 
The noise of the explosion was tremendous, lasting over a 
minute, while the echoes continued nearly five minutes more. 
It was heard for miles round; many imagined it was an 
explosion of fire-damp in some of the neighbouring pits, 
~ when they found it was not followed by an earthquake. 
Of course the rustics are speculating what it portends ; but 
as they cannot settle whether it came out of the earth or to 
_ the earth, they only agree in concluding we live in strange 
times, and strengthen this position by referring to the splendid. 
aurora borealis seen here last Monday.”’ 
