Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850

by Various

Various hypotheses have been framed to explain the nature and origin of these remarkable appearances. When electricity began to be understood, this was thought to afford a satisfactory explanation, and the shooting stars were regarded by Beccaria and Vassali as merely electrical sparks. When the inflammable nature of the gases became known, Lavosier and Volta supposed an accumulation of hydrogen in the higher regions of the atmosphere, because of its inferior density, giving rise by ignition to the meteoric exhibitions. While these theories of the older philosophers have been shown to be untenable, there is still great obscurity resting upon the question, though we have reason to refer the phenomena to a cause exterior to the bounds of our atmosphere. Upon this ground, the subject assumes a strictly astronomical aspect, and claims a place in a treatise on the economy of the solar system.

The first attempt accurately to investigate these elegant meteors was made by two university students, afterward Professors Brandes of Leipsic, and Benzenberg of Dusseldorf, in the year 1798. They selected a base line of 46,200 feet, somewhat less than nine English miles, and placed themselves at its extremities on appointed nights, for the purpose of ascertaining their average altitude and velocity. Out of twenty-two appearances identified as the same, they found,

7 under 45 miles
9 between 45 and 90 miles
5 above 90 miles
1 above 140 miles.

The greatest observed velocity gave twenty-five miles in a second. A more extensive plan was organized by Brandes in the year 1823, and carried into effect in the neighborhood of Breslaw. Out of ninety-eight appearances, the computed heights were,

4 under 15 miles
15 from 15 to 30 miles
22 from 30 to 45 miles
33 from 45 to 70 miles
13 from 70 to 90 miles
6 above 90 miles
5 from 140 to 460 miles.

The velocities were between eighteen and thirty-six miles in a second, an average velocity far greater than that of the earth in its orbit.

The rush of luminous bodies through the sky of a more extraordinary kind, though a rare occurrence, has repeatedly been observed. They are usually discriminated from shooting stars, and known by the vulgar as fire-balls; but probably both proceed from the same cause, and are identical phenomena. They have sometimes been seen of large volume, giving an intense light, a hissing noise accompanying their progress, and a loud explosion attending their termination. In the year 1676, a meteor passed over Italy about two hours after sunset, upon which Montanari wrote a treatise. It came over the Adriatic Sea as if from Dalmatia, crossed the country in the direction of Rimini and Leghorn, a loud report being heard at the latter place, and disappeared upon the sea toward Corsica. A similar visitor was witnessed all over England, in 1718, and forms the subject of one of Halley’s papers to the Royal Society. Sir Hans Sloane was one of its spectators. Being abroad at the time of its appearance, at a quarter past eight at night, in the streets of London, his path was suddenly and intensely illuminated. This, he apprehended at first, might arise from a discharge of rockets; but found a fiery object in the heavens, moving after the manner of a falling star, in a direct line from the Pleiades to below the girdle of Orion. Its brightness was so vivid, that several times he was obliged to turn away his eyes from it. The stars disappeared, and the moon, then nine days old, and high near the meridian, the sky being very clear, was so effaced by the lustre of the meteor as to be scarcely seen. It was computed to have passed over three hundred geographical miles in a minute, at the distance of sixty miles above the surface, and was observed at different extremities of the kingdom. The sound of an explosion was heard through Devon and Cornwall, and along the opposite coast of Bretagne. Halley conjectured this and similar displays to proceed from combustible vapors aggregated on the outskirts of the atmosphere, and suddenly set on fire by some unknown cause. But since his time, the fact has been established, of the actual fall of heavy bodies to the earth from surrounding space, which requires another hypothesis. To these bodies the term aërolites is applied, signifying atmospheric stones, from αηρ, the atmosphere, and λιθος, a stone. While many meteoric appearances may simply arise from electricity, or from the inflammable gases, it is now certain, from the proved descent of aërolites, that such bodies are of extra-terrestrial origin.

Antiquity refers us to several objects as having descended from the skies, the gifts of the immortal gods. Such was the Palladium of Troy, the image of the goddess of Ephesus, and the sacred shield of Numa. The folly of the ancients in believing such narrations has often been the subject of remark; but, however fabulous the particular cases referred to, the moderns have been compelled to renounce their skepticism respecting the fact itself, of the actual transition of substances from celestial space to terrestrial regions; and no doubt the ancient faith upon this subject was founded on observed events. The following table, taken from the work of M. Izarn, Des Pierres tombées du Ciel, exhibits a collection of instances of the fall of aërolites, together with the eras of their descent, and the persons on whose evidence the facts rest; but the list might be largely extended.

Substance.	Place.	Period.	Authority.
Shower of stones	At Rome	Under Tullus Hostilius	Livy.
Shower of stones	At Rome	Consuls C. Martius and M. Torquatus	J. Obsequens.
Shower of iron	In Lucania	Year before the defeat of Crassus	Pliny.
Shower of mercury	In Italy		Dion.
Large stone	Near the river Negos, Thrace	Second year of the 78th Olympiad	Pliny.
Three large stones	In Thrace	Year before J. C. 452	Ch. of Count Marcellin.
Shower of fire	At Quesnoy	January 4, 1717	Geoffroy le Cadet.
Stone of 72lbs.	Near Larissa, Macedonia	January 1706	Paul Lucas.
About 1200 stones } —one of 120lbs. } Another of 60lbs. }	Near Padua in Italy	In 1510	Carden, Varcit.
Another of 59lbs.	On Mount Vasier, Provence	November 27, 1627	Gassendi.
Shower of sand for 15 hours	In the Atlantic	April 6, 1719	Père la Fuillée.
Shower of sulphur	Sodom and Gomorra		Moses.
Sulphurous rain	In the Duchy of Mansfield	In 1658	Spangenburgh.
The same	Copenhagen	In 1646	Olaus Wormius.
Shower of sulphur	Brunswick	October 1721	Siegesbær.
Shower of unknown matter	Ireland	In 1695	Muschenbroeck.
Two large stones, weighing 20lbs.	Liponas, in Bresse	September 1753	Lalande.
A stony mass	Niort, Normandy	In 1750	Lalande.
A stone of 7-1/2lbs.	At Luce, in Le Maine	September 13, 1768	Bachelay.
A stone	At Aire, in Artois	In 1768	Gursonde de Boyaval.
A stone	In Le Cotentin	In 1768	Morand.
Extensive shower of stones	Environs of Agen	July 24, 1790	St. Amand, Baudin, &c.
About twelve stones	Sienna, Tuscany	July 1794	Earl of Bristol.
A large stone of 56lbs.	Wold Cottage, Yorkshire	December 13, 1795	Captain Topham.
A stone of about 20lbs.	Sale, Department of the Rhone	March 17, 1798	Lelievre and De Drée.
A stone of 10lbs.	In Portugal	February 19, 1796	Southey.
Shower of stones	Benares, East Indies	December 19, 1798	J. Lloyd Williams, Esq.
Shower of stones	At Plaun, near Tabor, Bohemia	July 3, 1753	B. de Born.
Mass of iron, 70 cubic feet	America	April 5, 1800	Philosophical Mag.
Mass of iron, 14 quintals	Abakauk, Siberia	Very old	Pallas, Chladni, &c.
Shower of stones	Barboutan, near Roquefort	July 1789	Darcet Jun., Lomet, &c.
Large stone of 260lbs.	Ensisheim, Upper Rhine	November 7, 1492	Butenschoen.
Two stones, 200 and 300lbs.	Near Verona	In 1762	Acad. de Bourd.
A stone of 20lbs.	Sules, near Ville Franche	March 12, 1798	De Drée.
Several stones from 10 to 17lbs.	Near L’Aigle, Normandy	April 26, 1803	Fourcroy.

Some of the instances in the table are of sufficient interest to deserve a notice.