360 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



people. Boetius de Boot in his book on Stones (1609) 

 says : "Si quis hanc vulgi opinionem refellere velit insipiens 

 videatur ". 



The preceding examples will serve as a sketch of the 

 evidence which presented itself to scientific men in the last 

 century. 



Meanwhile, however — and this is the fact to which I 

 wish particularly to draw attention because it makes the 

 history of meteorites so curious as a study of scientific 

 evidence — the whole subject had with the growth of scienti- 

 fic knowledge become gradually discredited among thought- 

 ful and well-educated people. Now that we know the fact 

 to have been true, it is easy on the one hand to make 

 allowances for the fancy which enters so largely into such 

 past accounts as that of the Hatford fall, and on the other 

 to reject among the present records which appear from time 

 to time in the public press those which describe the fall of 

 stones during thunderstorms, and under other improbable 

 or impossible conditions, as well as the details imputed by 

 terror and superstition. 



But before the fact was known to be true, the evidence 

 was so vitiated by delusions of various sorts, and eye-wit- 

 nesses were so apt to be deceived by the sudden nature of 

 the event and the terror which it inspired, that those who 

 were best able to criticise circumstantial evidence were the 

 first to reject that relating to meteorites. 



I rather suspect that this was also so among the ancients, 

 although the same critical attitude towards such events 

 would hardly be expected from them. Aristotle barely 

 alludes to thunderstones ; there appears to be no mention 

 of them in Herodotus ; and Lucretius only asks why a bolt 

 never falls when the sky is unclouded. 



In later times neither Locke, nor Bacon, nor Newton 

 appears to make any reference to the matter ; and Boyle 

 only mentions meteorites as " Stones which pass among 

 the vulgar for thunderstones ". 



At the end of the last century the leaders of scientific 

 thought had criticised the evidence and rejected it in toto. 



Their position is really very well expressed more than 



