356 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



" At Hatford some 8 m. from Oxford. Over this towne 

 upon Wensday being the 9th of this instant Moneth of 

 April, 1628, about 5 of the clocke in the after noone this 

 miraculous, prodigious and fearefull handyworke of God 

 was presented. A gentle gale of Wind then blowing from 

 between the W. and N.W. in an instant was heard first a 

 hideous rumbling in the Ayre, and presently after followed 

 a strange and feare-full peal of Thunder running up and 

 downe these parts of the countrey, but it strake with the 

 loudest violence and more furious tearing of the Ayre about 

 a place called the White Horse Hill. The whole order of 

 this thunder carried a kind of majesticall state with it, for 

 it maintayned (to the affrighted Beholder's seeming) the 

 fashion of a fought Battaile. It began thus : — First for 

 an onset went off one great Cannon as it were of thunder 

 above like a warning peece to the rest that were to follow. 

 Then a little while after was heard a second ; and so by 

 degrees a third untill the number of 20 was discharged in 

 very good order though in very great terror. In some little 

 distance of time after this was audibly heard the sound of a 

 Drum beating a Retreate. Amongst all these angry peales 

 shot off from Heaven this begat a wonderful admiration 

 that at the end of the report of every cracke or Cannon- 

 thundering, a hizzing noise made way through the ayre not 

 unlike the flying of bullets from the mouthes of Great 

 Ordnance ; and by the judgment of all the terror stricken 

 witnesses they were Thunder bolts. For one of them was 

 seene by many people to fall at a place called Bawlkin 

 Greene being a mile and a half from Hatford ; which 

 Thunder bolt was by one Mistris Greene caused to be 

 digged out of the grounde she being an eye-witnesse amongst 

 many other of the manner of falling. The form of the 

 stone is three-square and picked in the end : The colour 

 outwardly blackish, somewhat like Iron ; crusted over with 

 that blacknesse about the thicknesse of a shilling. Within 

 it is a soft, of a gray colour, mixed with some kind of miner- 

 all shining like small peeces of glasse." 



With this may further be compared the record relating 

 to a fall of iron at about the same date (1620) but in a very 



