One evening, in the State of Ohio, a farmer saw a very brilliant meteor; it struck in one of his fields not more than 100 feet from his house. He at once rushed to the spot, and, pushing his arm down the hole, succeeded in touching it; but he very quickly withdrew his hand, as he found it extremely hot. Some of the neighbours rushed to the spot, and he told them what had occurred, whereupon one of them put his hand in the hole, expecting to be burnt, but, much to his surprise, the tips of his wet fingers were instantly frozen to the meteor. The meteor had been travelling at such an exceedingly high velocity that the resistance of the intensely cold and highly attenuated outer atmosphere was sufficient to bring its temperature up to the melting point of iron; but the heat did not have time to pass into the interior, it only extended inwards perhaps 1/8 inch, so that when the meteor came to a state of rest, the heat of the exterior was soon absorbed by the intensely cold interior, thus reducing the surface to a temperature much below any natural temperature that we find at the surface of the earth. Nothing can be more certain than that the temperature is extremely low a slight distance above the earth’s surface. As the air near the earth never falls in temperature to anything like the absolute zero, it follows that there is a constant change going on, the relatively warm air near the surface of the earth always ascending, and, in some cases, doing sufficient work in expanding to render a portion of the water it contains visible, forming clouds, rain, or snow, while the very cold air is constantly descending to take the place of the rising column of warm air. I have noticed a considerable degree of regularity in the movement of the air, especially at a long distance from land, where the regularity of the up and down currents is, at times, very marked.