An English correspondent writes:
Sir,—On Sunday afternoon between 4 and 5 I happened to notice in a northerly direction from Dalhousie an occurrence closely corresponding with the description in your issue of the 3rd of the fall of an aërolite which took place near Lahore on the same day about the same time. A volume of smoke in the shape of an inverted cone was seen to be rising from a point some 10 to 20 miles distant and perhaps rather higher in level than that of Dalhousie, and gave a yellowish tinge to the background of snowy heights. The circumstance was sufficiently singular as to induce me to fetch a field glass to observe it more closely. My first idea was to attribute the smoke to a forest fire; but that idea was dismissed as soon as conceived, as in the first place the time of year would make a forest fire out of the question, and secondly the smoke from a forest fire would not all rise from a single point.
The observation of similar occurrences at three places in the Punjab leads to the inference that this part of India was visited on Sunday afternoon last, not by one aërolite, but by a shower of aërolites; as it may be held that, for every aërolite effect seen, there were a host that were unnoticed, and will never be recorded.
(2) We have received a large number of letters indicating that the burning meteor seen on Sunday was witnessed all the way from Patiala to Jhelum. A correspondent reports that at Jammu the meteor was accompanied by the sound of cannon fire. Another reporter from Kapurthala says that it looked like a column of fire reaching out to the sky, shedding light on the story related about Ya‘qub’s [ Jacob’s] ladder; in Ra’iyah four persons fainted with shock.