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 tliat he 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 miglit 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 tlie 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 
atmosphere to its rapid passage liaving 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 lieat evolved in tlieir 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 
