METEORS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'']
Selt,—In your well-compressed paper on Meteors, there is doubt- less nothing omitted that rests " on stronger evidence than the notion that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was brought about" by what is now the " November shower ;" but when the writer says he has dismissed hypotheses that "scarcely rest on stronger evidence," implying that a probability scarcely exceeding those for the above " notion " would not be a very high pro- bability, compared with the evidences for the average scientific matter of the day, his miscalculation is amusing.
The " notion" (for which I am responsible, in the Builder of December 5) is briefly this : that the Cities of the Plain were destroyed by a crowded group of the sodio-magnesic meteors known to be following Tempers telescopic comet of January, 1866. Now the chances to be considered were those for the following six coincidences :-1. That the period deduced from the node-passages of the comet's only observed visits, the Chinese of 1366 and ours of 1866, would give a visit in the winter between B.C. 1898 and 97, in one of which years the catastrophe is dated, consequently in the right biennium out of 161.
2. That the earth's passage of the node was then about July 31, and the event was in a hot season (when Abraham needed shade at noon, and the visitors proposed abiding in the street all night). Suppose this applicable in Palestine to half the year ; then we have the right half-year out of 2.
3. A fall as vertical as rain (" then the Lord rained ") was possible, from this source, in no hour but that of sunrise. Hence we have the right hour out of 24.
4. Dividing each hemisphere (say) into 8 zones of latitude, this degree of verticality was possible in none of these but the third north. Hence we have the right latitude region out of 16.
5. Sodium, the chief element in the abnormal deposits now there (and in the salt said to have buried Lot's wife) was also the chief observed by Browning and Secchi in these meteors ; and is not the chief in one-thousandth of the matters on earth. But let us sup- pose a twentieth of all known matter to display it as prominently as the meteors did ; then we have the right chief element out of 20.
6. Magnesium, the second in those salt deposits, was the only other ingredient conspicuous to Browning or to Secchi ; and though it stands higher in the order of known abundance on earth than sodium, it would not be thus conspicuous in one known solid of ten. Hence we have the right second element out of 10.
Now, suppose any event not due to this comet to be recorded. The chances against the account presenting those six agreements with its elements, and no disagreement, are found by deducting 1 from 161 x 2 x 24 x 16 x 20 x 10. In short, the discoveries of these three years have made it three millions to one that the history of Sodom is true, and this the physical cause.
Now, I do not call that scientific "certainty," but it will not be easy to find in meteoric science a result resting on much stronger evidence. Let me suggest the treatment in this way of Leverrier's theory, that the same comet and meteors might have been turned into their present orbit by Uranus in A.D. 126. The difference of one month in its period will be found to have left this calcula-
tion " nowhere. —I am, Sir, &c., ' ED. LACY GARBETT.
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