METEORITES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 355 



fell which are actually preserved at the present day, so that 

 the veracity of contemporary accounts relating to them can no 

 longer be questioned. From the sixteenth century onwards 

 there are a number of such accounts in which we can now, 

 reading by the light of subsequent experience, see internal 

 evidence of their accuracy, and by which we are led to 

 attach equal confidence to the accuracy of some of the 

 earlier reports such as that of the /Egos Potami fall. 

 Omitting, therefore, a number of mediaeval references which 

 may be found in the Saxon chronicles, Eusebius, Cardanus, 

 Avicenna, Scaliger and others, we may pass directly to the 

 Ensisheim fall, the earliest one of which we possess a con- 

 temporary account relating to a stone that still exists and 

 has been proved to be meteoric. 



Fall of the Ensisheim Stone. 



The account is as follows : — 



"On the 1 6th of November, 1492, a singular miracle 

 took place. Between 11 and 12 in the forenoon with a 

 loud crash of thunder and a prolonged noise heard afar off 

 there fell in the town of Ensisheim a stone weighing 260 

 pounds. It was seen by a child to strike the ground in a 

 field where it made a hole more than five feet deep. It 

 was taken to the church as a miraculous object. The noise 

 was heard so distinctly at Lucerne and many other places 

 that in each of them it was thought that some houses had 

 fallen. King Maximilian, who was then at Ensisheim, had 

 the stone carried to the castle ; after breaking off two 

 pieces, one for the Duke of Austria and the other for him- 

 self, he forbade further damage, and ordered the stone to 

 be suspended in the parish church." 



With this may be compared an account quoted by Sir 

 Norman Lockyer from a rare tract in the British Museum, 

 in which the obviously truthful statement of the occurrence 

 is somewhat obscured by the fancy begotten by terror. 



The tract is entitled : — 



Looke tip and see wonders : a miraculous Apparition in 

 the Ayre, lately seen in Barkeshire at Bawlkin Greene nea7 r e 



Hatford. And is as follows ■ — 



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