e 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 aerolites is applied, signifying
atmospheric stones, from [Greek: aer], the atmosphere, and [Greek: lithos], a stone. While
many meteoric appearances