232 NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
before the occurrence remarked how very oppressive it was, all doors and windows
being open. One of our guests remarked 'We shall have an earthquake.' A few
minutes later, at twelve minutes to twelve, there was a vivid flash of lightning
which seemed to fill the room with fire, accompanied by a tremendous crash like
the bursting of a shell. The crash and flash were instantaneous and simultaneous.
I thought that the house had been struck by lightning, was probably on fire, and
feared that some of its inmates might have sustained serious injury. I ran into
the hall, which was already thronged with anxious faces, and noted that the park
in front of the house, on the north side, was full of smoke. The rain came down
in torrents for some minutes. As soon as it moderated, we sallied forth, and soon
found traces of the explosion. The bark of an elm tree, sixty yards to the north-
west of the house, had been torn off in several places, and hurled about in thick
rope-like lengths ; the posts of the park gates, thirty yards to the north east, had
both been struck, the one in two places with slight damage, the other stripped as
if by a shell, blackened and burnt splinters being scattered hither and thither in
every direction to a distance of sixty yards or more.
" I think it probable that the aerolite exploded at the height of some fifty feet
from the ground, on the north side of the house. The distance between the elm
tree which was struck, on the north-west side, and the park gates on the north-
east is about one hundred yards. The smoke which followed the explosion hung
between these two points for some minutes. Everyone in the house seems to
have experienced the same sensation of being surrounded by fire. A herd of cows
feeding in the park were terrified and careered madly away."
Rainfall in Chelmsford, January to July, 1896, compared with
Average for Twenty-Eight Years.—Mr. Symons, in "The Times" of
August 3rd, compares the result of the rainfall in London for the first seven months
of the year for the last thirty-seven years, comparing it with the rainfall of the
same months of this year. My record only goes back for twenty-eight years, but
the result as far as this part of the country is concerned may be of interest to some
of your readers.
This shows that our deficiency is only about half what Mr. Symons' records
prove it to have been in London, and I am not sure that in itself it would have
been very serious ; but the important point, as far as we are concerned, is that
the deficiency follows an exceptionally dry year, and also a series of dry .
years. I find that the average rainfall of the ten years, 1876 to 1885, was
25.23, whereas the average rainfall of the ten years, 1886 to 1895, was only
21.00, and the rainfall of 1895 was only 17.45. The average rainfall for the last
twenty-eight years is 22'9o, so that if we deduct last year's rainfall from this
average we have a loss of 5.45, which added to 278, the loss on the first seven
months of this year makes a total loss of 8.23, nearly 81/4 inches in nineteen
months.—Fred Chancellor, Chelmsford, August 5th, 1896.