368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



ther damage, and ordered the stone to be suspended in the parish 

 church." 



In 1768 a stone was seen to fall at Luce*, in France, and three 

 French Academicians, one of whom was Lavoisier, were appointed 

 to investigate it. As they were convinced beforehand that the 

 stone could not have fallen from the sky, they reported to the 

 Academy that it was an ordinary stone, which had been struck by 

 lightning. 



The German philosopher Chladni, in 1794, was the first to 

 bring together the accounts of bodies said to have fallen from the 

 sky, and he felt confident in his conclusion that at least two of 

 these came from outer space. One was the now well-known Pallas 

 meteorite, found by a Cossack, in 1749, on the top of a lofty mount- 

 ain, and brought by the traveler Pallas from Krasnojarsk, Siberia, 

 in 1772. The mass, consisting largely of iron, weighed fifteen 

 hundred pounds, and was thought by the Tartars to be a holy 

 thing fallen from heaven, because it differed entirely from all the 

 rocks of the country. The second was one found, in 1783, by In- 

 dians, projecting a foot above the ground, at Otumpa, province 

 of Tucuman, Argentine Republic. It was thought to be an iron- 

 mine, and Don Michael Rubin de Celis was sent to investigate it. 

 He reported that it was a mass of iron weighing about thirty 

 thousand pounds, and that there was no other iron in the neigh- 

 borhood, and no stones, and no human habitations. 



Chladni argued that these two masses of iron must have been 

 formed through fire, and, as there were no signs of volcanoes in 

 the countries where they were found, and as volcanoes had never 

 been known to eject masses of iron, he concluded that they must 

 have come to our earth from space. 



Two months after Chladni had advanced his theory, there fell 

 a shower of stones at Siena, in Tuscany, .an account of which 

 was given in a letter received by Sir William Hamilton from the 

 Earl of Bristol, dated Siena, July 12, 1794 : 



1 In the midst of a most violent thunder-storm, about a dozen 

 stones of various weights and dimensions fell at the feet of differ- 

 ent persons, men, women, and children. The stones are of a quality 

 not found in any part of the Siennese territory : they fell about 

 eighteen hours after the enormous eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 

 which circumstance leaves a choice of difficulties in the solution 

 of this extraordinary phenomenon. Either these stones have been 

 generated in this igneous mass of clouds which produced such 

 unusual thunder, or, which is equally incredible, they were thrown 

 from Vesuvius at a distance of at least two hundred and fifty 

 miles ; judge, then, of its parabola. The philosophers here incline 

 to the first solution. I wish much, sir, to know your sentiments. 

 My first objection was to the fact itself, but of this there are so 



