XXY. 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
Meteorology. 
Head at St. Albans , 22nd December , 1890. 
A Meteorite observed in Switzerland * —The following note may 
be regarded as bearing some relation to the inquiry made in 1887 
into the phenomena noticed in Hertfordshire and the neighbouring 
counties on the 20th of November in that year.f 
On the 20th of June, 1890, I was walking along a mountain-road 
in the Vaudois Alps, at an elevation of 3445 feet above the level of 
the sea, when I saw fall perpendicularly at some distance from me, 
an object which was only visible by the well-defined streak of 
white light to which its passage through the air gave rise. This 
was at approximately ten minutes past five (Bern time) in the 
afternoon. The sun was shining brightly behind me, and I was 
looking towards the E., across a valley, at a mountain (the Grand 
Muveran), which presented to me, at a distance of about four miles, 
a wall of reddish-grey rock, rising at the summit of the mountain 
to an elevation of 10,040 feet above sea-level. It was precisely 
between the point at which I stood, a mile or so to the S.W. of the 
village of Gryon, and this wall of rock, that the streak of light was 
seen. I heard no noise of any kind. Upon a line of four miles in 
length, crossing rough and wooded ground, it seemed useless to 
search for any solid fragment which may have reached the earth, 
and, in fact, no search has been made. The Swiss newspapers J 
record two other observations on the same day and at the same 
time, which, without doubt, are referable to the same meteorite. 
They were (1) near Bern, at a distance of 50 miles to the N.N.E. 
from Gryon, and (2) near Geneva, at 43 miles due W. Between 
these two points is a distance of about 80 miles. The notices in the 
newspapers are very short. Near Bern the observers were four 
members of the Federal Assembly, and the bolide is said to have 
fallen at a few hundred yards in front of them, leaving a bluish- 
white streak, recalling exactly the electric light. A similar streak 
was noticed near Geneva, but a bolide does not appear to have 
fallen in that neighbourhood, as it is spoken of as “ approaching the 
horizon.” No sound is mentioned in connection with these observa¬ 
tions. In this case, therefore, the two approximately perpendicular 
falls, at Bern and Gryon, and the observation of a bolide passing at 
an angle not stated, at a point which makes a triangle with the 
two former localities, suggest that a meteorite had burst at so great 
a height in the atmosphere that no sound of explosion reached the 
surface of the earth, and had scattered its fragments so as to cover 
* See also 11 Note sur le bolide du 20 juin, 1890,” par H. G. Fordham.— 
1 Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles,’ 3 e serie, vol. xxvii, 
No. 104, p. 220. 
f ‘ Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc.,’ Vol. V, p. 33. 
X 1 Da Gazette de Lausanne 23rd and 24th June, 1890 ; ‘ Le Genevois etc. 
VOL. VI.—PART VI. 
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