e,
Sweden, investigated:

That, upon the 16th of May, 1808, at about 4 P.M., the sun suddenly
turned dull brick-red. At the same time there appeared, upon the western
horizon, a great number of round bodies, dark brown, and seemingly the
size of a hat crown. They passed overhead and disappeared in the eastern
horizon. Tremendous procession. It lasted two hours. Occasionally one
fell to the ground. When the place of a fall was examined, there was
found a film, which soon dried and vanished. Often, when approaching the
sun, these bodies seemed to link together, or were then seen to be
linked together, in groups not exceeding eight, and, under the sun, they
were seen to have tails three or four fathoms long. Away from the sun
the tails were invisible. Whatever their substance may have been, it is
described as gelatinous--"soapy and jellied."

I place this datum here for several reasons. It would have been a good
climax to our expression upon hordes of small bodies that, in our
acceptance, were not seeds, nor birds, nor ice-crystals: but the
tendency would have been to jump to the homogeneous conclusion that all
our data in that expression related to this one kind of phenomena,
whereas we conceive of infinite heterogeneity of the external: of
crusaders and rabbles and emigrants and tourists and dragons and things
like gelatinous hat crowns. Or that all things, here, upon this earth,
that flock together, are not necessarily sheep, Presbyterians,
gangsters, or porpoises. The datum is important to us, here, as
indication of disruption in this earth's atmosphere--dangers in entering
this earth's atmosphere.

I think, myself, that thousands of objects have been seen to fall from
aloft, and have exploded luminously, and have been called "ball
lightning."

"As to what ball lightning is, we have not yet begun to make intelligent
guesses." (_Monthly Weather Review_, 34-17.)

In general, it seems to me that when we encounter the opposition "ball
lightning" we should pay little attention, but confine ourselves to
guesses that are at least intelligent, that stand phantom-like in our
way. We note here that in some of our acceptances upon intelligence we
should more clearly have pointed out that they were upon the intelligent
as opposed to the instinctive. In the _Monthly Weather Review_, 33-409,
there is an account of "ball lightning" that struck a tree. It made a
dent such as a falling object would make. Some other time I shall