66 Proceedings of tlie Royal Physical Society. 



In answer to further inquiries, Colonel Hunter informed 

 me he was about 1000 yards distant from the falling body, 

 and that lie heard no report or sound whatever accompanying 

 its fall ; indeed, lie says, its noiseless steady descent was 

 most startling. At the same time another luminous body 

 passed to the north-east over one of his fields where people 

 were at work ; this one, most unaccountably, he did not see, 

 but fancies it might be the body from which this fire-ball 

 is supposed to have fallen ; at least his gamekeeper, who, as 

 already mentioned, observed the body fall, states that he saw 

 apparently the disruption of the meteor — a portion falling to 

 the ground, and the rest proceeding onwards on its course. 



As no report of any kind had been heard when the meteor 

 was seen to fall, I was very doubtful of a stone-like body 

 having fallen ; a loud report being the general concomitant 

 of the fall of an aerolite. I fancied that if any fall had taken 

 place, the meteor might have consisted of gaseous matter or 

 have been due to electric agency ; the resistance of the 

 atmosjmere to its rapid passage having been too slight to 

 cause any noise, or the appearance might have been simply 

 illusory, and caused by the passage of a meteor at a distance 

 too great to have been audible. I was aware, of course, of the 

 danger of any peculiar or unusual looking stone lying near 

 the place where an apparent fall had taken place, being picked 

 up as the actual body that was seen, and believed at least, to 

 have fallen there. 



The published analysis, however, was against this view of 

 the case, and Colonel Hunter politely forwarded to me the 

 mineral mass for examination, and also some of its broken 

 portions, to allow of the correctness of the analysis being- 

 tested. On examining the stone I found no traces of the 

 dark-coloured outer coating or skin which exists on ordinary 

 meteoric stones, depending, it is believed, on the fusion of 

 their surface by the heat evolved in their passage through 

 the atmosphere ; but instead, the surface was rough and 

 irregular, showing on one side various cubical masses of coal, 

 and on the other the coal-like matter projecting in some 

 places through a series of thin layers, apparently of white 

 sulphuret of iron, white iron pyrites. The specimen speaks 



