METEORS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Without laying stress upon "the eternal fitness of things," I cannot but think that Mr. E. L. Garbett has in your last number made out a strong case in his statement that the Cities of the Plain were probably "destroyed by a crowded group of the sodio-magnesic meteors known to be following Tempel's telescopic comet of January, 1866." He says the only observed visits are the Chinese of 1366 and ours of 1866, from which a period has been deduced which would " give a visit in the winter between B.C. 1898 and 97, in one of which years the catastrophe is dated."
Supposing this statement to be correct, there is an incident which tends greatly to confirm it. It will be observed that the interval between the two observations is 500 years ; now just 1,000 years after the destruction of Sodom, in the year that King Ahaziah died, B.C. 897, we find it recorded that fire descended from heaven, " upon the top of a hill," at two different times, and each time consumed a captain of fifty with his fifty.—I am,
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