Singular Phenomenon

Mr. James Arlington Bennet has written an interesting and curious letter to the Commercial Advertiser respecting several meteors he has noted during the last year. Respecting the first he says:

'Being near the sea shore some years ago, in the month of August, I observed a bright meteor descending right in front of me, almost in a perpendicular line, and not, to appearance, three rods distant, and being between me and the sea it maintained its light until it almost touched the ground. A light shock instantly struck my ear as though something had fallen. I approached the spot, but there being only star light could see nothing. On feeling the ground, however, I stuck my finger into something soft, which I found to have a most peculiar fetid smell, like something I had never met with in the laboratory or any where else. Next morning I examined the place and found about two pounds of brown jelly, which had descended in globular form, but had been broken by the fall and formed a small segment of a sphere. Having no means of either weighing or analysing [analyzing] this matter, I passed it by with the conjecture that it was the substance which forms these meteors or falling stars. The altitude of this meteor could not be more than one hundred yards.'

The next fell in the pail of his milk-maid, depositing the same kind of jelly without her observing its fall. The only effect of the shock was to throw the pail a little on one side.

'The third that presented itself was about the latter end of July, last year. Having gone toward the stable between 11 and 12 o'clock, of a very clear night, I noticed all of a sudden that the east end of the coach-house presented a brilliant light, and turning to look for the cause, a most splendid meteor, which had run nearly half its course, leaving a brilliant streak of light after it, was descending directly towards me, on an angle of about 45 degrees, when it immediately ceased to shine. 'There goes another jelly,' I said to myself, 'which I must hunt up in the morning."

Mr. Bennet marked the spot where it fell, and next morning proceeded with a lad to find it. It had fallen farther off than he expected, and he says:

I passed four fields without success, when at the lower end of the fifth field, a piece of meadow land, full half a mile from where I stood, to my wonder and admiration I discovered a little on the right of the line of search, a body of dark brown jelly, exactly like one side of a convex lens, three feet in diameter, but broken into many pieces by the fall. The stench was most insufferable. This body of jelly before it fell must have formed a globe of from ten to twelve inches in diameter, if not more. This jelly, which lay on the spot where it fell until the 12th of September following, entirely destroyed all the grass under and near it. Now I think that the base line of a right angle triangle at double the distance from where I stood, and this meteor having its formation at the head of the perpendicular, its altitude must be counted at least one mile, as its downward course would trace the hypothenuse (hypotenuse) of the same triangle for some distance.

I put a piece of this jelly on the coals, the odor from which drove the servants from the kitchen. There arose neither flame nor smoke, yet it extinguished the coals where it lay. Being very busy at the time, I did not attempt to determine its constituents. Its fracture was not, however, like that of jelly, but it appeared to break into cubes.

There is a possibility of this meteor having had its origin much higher in the atmosphere

than here supposed, its velocity appeared to be very great, but as I heard no explosion by which its true distance and altitude might have been determined, the elevation of one mile is but hypothesis. The meteor of the 18th August, 1793, described by Mr. Cavello, in the Philosophical Transactions of London for 1784 he places by vague and uncertain data at an elevation from the earth of 56 1-2 miles, and pretends to have heard the explosion twelve minutes after, at 130 miles distance!

May not each of these jellies be the residum [residuum] or symthetical result of the combustion or discharge of a large portion of gasses, through an electrical agent? The universal downward tendency of their motion shows that their specific gravity is much more than that of the atmosphere, and that they therefore must be formed at the moment of discharge.

'The editor puts after this the account of the shower of flesh and blood that fell lately in South Carolina, and says perhaps Mr. B.'s theory will explain it. There may be something in this; and the two substances noticed in each case may result from the same cause, and that so often laughed at under the name of 'a shower of flesh and blood' be a very philosophic and true thing after all.

But Mr. B. is mistaken in calling them meteors in the common acceptation of that term, we have no hesitation in saying. Those fiery masses that pass so rapidly through the air, accompanied often with loud detonations and throwing off fragments that reach the earth, are something entirely different. Those fragments are stone and are hurled so violently as to be embedded in the soil. The meteor described by Mr. Cavillo, in 1783, and to which Mr. Bennet refers, we take to be an entirely different thing from ordinary shooting stars. That it had a great altitude is also highly probable, for some of them most certainly have. The heavy stones which they have frequently hurled to the earth, would have effectually demolished the maid's milk pail. The substance of the meteoric showers, so called, no one pretends to know. They are supposed, however, to be entirely different from the ordinary shooting stars.

The falling star that any one may see of a clear night, has long been regarded by philosophers as a gelatinous matter, inflated with phosphuretted [phosphoretted ?] hydrogen gas: and the splendid meteor of Mr. Bennet was doubtless one of those ordinary shooting stars appearing very bright by its proximity. The gelatinous substance he found, accords with the experience and theory of others, and indeed is a very singular and curious corroboration of them.

That these substances 'must be formed at the moment of discharge, we do not think necessary. Their ascent and descent would depend entirely on the amount of gas they contain.

The idea of accounting for the shower of flesh and blood on this theory is certainly new to us, and deserves, we think assecond [a second] thought.'

We think the following scriptures will explain it more scripturally, if not more philosophically.

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth, distress of nations with perplexity:' Luke, XXI;25.

'And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord shall come:' Joel, II;30-3l-Ed.