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The Evening Star.
Philadelphia. Saturday, June 26.
The Law Of Motion.
Editor Evening Star.
In reply to you editorial of Wednesday, the following opinion is submitted: The law of motion is simply a scientific explanation of action and reaction; or, if you please, the science of attraction of repulsion. What motion is, per se, is no more explainable by its law than is the essential nature of water by the law of its decomposition and recomposition. Eight atoms of oxygen and one atom of hydrogen, combined, makes water.
At a temperature of 212 degrees, under 15 pounds per square inch atmospheric pressure, it is converted into vapor or steam. At 32 degrees it becomes a solid. Within the limits of 32 degrees and 212 degrees it contracts by cold and expands by heat, with this exception to the law of expansion by heat and  contraction by cold, that at about 39 degrees it begins to expand. reversing its contracting course by cold, and at 32 degrees is solidified. At a red heat, i. e., contained in an iron vessel at a red heat, it makes no steam-it is inert until its temperature is much reduced, when it quickly assumes the form of steam.
Such, for illustration, is a partial science or law of water, but no explanation of what the essential matter of water is, no more than what the essential nature of motion, or power, or force, is. You can only trace science or law in effect, for as soon as you attempt to "cage" cause you have only "caged" in effect. Mortal mind is not competent to trace up effect of its firs cause no more than to comprehend the beginning of time or the outer limits or space, and yet we have a law of time and a law of space.
The argument of your philosopher is a play on words. An explanation of the effect of a thing is not the thing itself. The law of motion of the heavenly bodies does not explain what motion or force is. Newton's law of gravitation even begs the question of "projectile force," meaning that the Creator moulded up the cosmuical bodies like the boy does his snow ball, and the jerked them into space-a proposition as absurd as it is unphilosophical.
We can only trace motion to the expense of decomposition, not beyond that, and if there is no law of motion there can be no law of action and reaction, or attraction and repulsion.  J. Wise.

A Phenomenon Of The Fire.
Editor Evening Star.
Yesterday afternoon as the great fire at Sixth and Columbia avenue was raging, a phenomenon occurred of so definite a type as to make it worth of notice. When the fire had got fairly under way, a column of smoke well defined, rose up to a height of 800 to 1000 feet, inclined southwestward about 20 degrees from a perpendicular, cause by a slight northeast breeze. At first the top of this column slowly bloomed out into a vaporous bulb, and the slowly into a nimbus cloud, presenting a prefect appearance of the incipient thunder cloud.
It holes its position and appearance for half an hour, its upper part illuminated by the sun. As the fire became subdued, this cloud gradually melted away, leaving in that part of the sky a murky appearance. There were no other clouds roundabout. The dew, or rain point of the atmosphere, was inclining towards rain all the day, but withal, at appears to me that the fire was the immediate cause of the copious shower last night.  J.W.

More News From The Great Meteor.
Its Visit To Lancaster, Penn.
[italics]To the Editor of the Tribune[italics]
Sire: Last evening at 7:25 o'clock a brilliant meteor shot athwart the heavens in a north-westerly direction. It started apparently a little to the north-west of the zenith, moving west by north-west until it reached a point about 30° above the western horizon, where it exploded. The explosion resembled the bursting of a shell, and then were thrown out two distinct trails of scintillations-one upward, of a serpentine shape and about 4° long; the other horizontally, about 3° in length, somewhat crooked and not so brilliant as the upper.


Aerial Navigation.
A paper read by John Wise,Aeronaut, before the Franklin Institute, Dec. 15, 1869.
Dr. James Bell Pettigrew, in a discourse before the Royal Institute, of Great Britain, on the subject of Aeronautics, said, among other things: "In order to construct a successful flying machine, it is not necessary to imitate the filmy wing of the insect, the silken pinion of the bat, of the complicated and highly differentialed wing of the bird, where every feather may be said to have a peculiar function assigned to it ; neither is it necessary to reproduce the intricacy of that machinery by which the power in the bat, insect, and bird is moved; all that is required is to distinguish the power and extent of the surfaces, and the manner of their application, and this has, in a great measure, been already done. When Vivian and Trevithick constructed the Locomotive, and Symington and Bell the Steam Boat, they did not seek to reproduce a quadruped, or a fish-they simply aimed at producing motion adapted to the land and water, in accordance with natural laws, and in the presence of living models. Their success is to be measured by an involved labyrinth of railroad, which extends to every part of the civilized world, and by navies, whose vessels are dispatched, without the slightest trepidation, to navigate the most boisterous seas, at the most inclement seasons.
"The aeronaut has the same task before him, in a different direction, and, in attempting an impossible thing. The countless swarms of flying things testify as to the practicability of the scheme, and nature at once supplies him with models and materials. If artificial flight were not attainable, the insects and birds would afford the only examples of animals whose movements could not be reproduced. The outgoings and incomings of the quadrupeds and the fish are, however, already successfully imitated, and the fowls of the air, though clamorous and shy, are not necessarily beyond our reach. Much has been said in clearing the forest and fertilizing the prairie-can nothing be done in reclaiming the boundless regions of the air?"
Certainly there can, if we begin right! As the first sea-ships were not made to be propelled by steam and paddle-wheels, but to be drifted leisurely on the water before the winds, I propose to inaugurate a system of aerial naviation on the like unpretentious principle; namely, drifting in the currents of the trade winds to such points and places as are withing the known province and the resources of aeronauts. We have, in this Northern Hemisphere, a system of trade-wind currents, at present so well authenticated and understood as to be acknowledged by the leading scientific institutions of the world as established meteorological facts, of daily recurrence ; and i have practically explored the time and again for thirty years past. In the temperate zone of the currents blow from the southwest and the northwest, overlapping each other and producing, between them, a compound or eddy current, blowing eastward.
In the spring and in the autumn these two great currents form conjunctions, and produce, for some days, those violent gales termed equinoctial storms, continuing until the balance is restored between the going and the coming of the trade winds, circulating between the equatorial and polar regions. The lower portion of the lower stratum of these currents-that is, the one from the northwest, is all the time, more or less, sliding off toward the south, and gradually curving round until it reaches the intertropical regions, where it is recognized by mariners as the northeast trade wind ; and here, meeting the more rapid motion of the Earth's surface from west to east, as well as the equatorial heat, it is whirled west-ward and upward, and pressed outward, as it ascends, producing the great upper current from the southwest; and thus the northwest current has become the southwest current.
On the other hand, our southwest current is all the time passing off a portion of its upper surface to the north, until it reaches the frigid zone, where it sinks down and becomes the northwest trade-wind current, underlapping the upper current, and, by its friction against the latter, producing what I term the eddy current, blowing nearly direct toward the east.
Thus, we have, withing the practical capability of the ordi-