in Meteorology, a meteor generally defined frozen rain, but differing from it in this, that the hailstones are not formed of single pieces of ice, but of many little spherules agglutinated together. Neither are these spherules all of the same consistence; some of them being hard and solid, like perfect ice, others soft, and mostly like snow hardened by a severe frost. Sometimes the hailstone has a kind of core of this soft matter; but more frequently the core is solid and hard, whilst the outside is formed of a softer matter. Hailstones assume various figures, being sometimes round, sometimes pyramidal, crenated, angular, thin, and flat, and sometimes stellated, with six radii like the small crystals of snow. See Meteorology.