FALL OF METEOROLITES AT THE CAPE. 145 



SHORT COMMUNICATIONS. 



Fall of Meteorolites at the Cape. 1 — Knowing your intima- 

 cy with Mr. Charlesworth, the Editor of the '■ Magazine of 

 Natural History,' it has occurred to me that some account of 

 an extraordinary phenomenon that took place on my return 

 from the interior, may not prove wholly uninteresting to him. 

 On the morning of the 13th October, about 9 o'clock, a fall of 

 stones (of which a specimen is herewith sent) occurred in the 

 Bokkeveld, about fifteen miles from Tulbagh, attended with 

 the most awful noise, louder and more appalling than the 

 strongest artillery, causing the air to vibrate for upwards of 

 eighty miles in every direction. Indeed it was felt from the 

 Cape Flats to the edge of the Great Karroo, and again from 

 Clan William to the River Zonderend, near Swellendam. — 

 The noise was awful ; and by those in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of the spot where the stones fell, is described as 

 something similar to the discharge of artillery, — by those at a 

 greater distance as rocks rolling from a mountain ; which was 

 the sensation at Worcester, some forty miles from the chief 

 site of the phenomenon. Many felt a curious sensation, es- 

 pecially about the knees, as if they had been electrified. At 

 the time of the occurrence I was on the very skirts of its in- 

 fluence, on the edge of the Karroo, in company with the Hon. 

 Mr. Justice Menzies. At the moment of the explosion I wit- 

 nessed a volume of the electric fluid forcing its way from the 

 west in the form of a Congreve rocket ; it exploded almost 

 immediately over my head, into apparent globules of fire, or 

 transparent glass. Throughout the region of the phenome- 

 non the air was highly charged with the electric fluid, espe- 

 cially the night prior to the fall of the stones. The moimtains 

 around Worcester and the Bokkeveld being in one continued 

 blaze of lightening, and some of the inhabitants described 

 the fire as rising from the earth. The stones (the quantity 

 I have not been able to ascertain, but supposed several cwts.) 

 fell in the presence of a farmer, who had with him a Hotten- 

 tot, who stood so near the shower as to become perfectly in- 

 sensible for some time, either from the electricity or from the 

 effects of fright. The stones fell in three spots, but all with- 

 in a square of forty or fifty yards. Some fell on hard ground 

 when they were smashed into small particles ; others in soft 



1 In a letter addressed to Robert Thompson. Esq., of the Admiralty, by 

 George Thompson, Esq., author of the well known " Travels in South Af- 

 rica." —Ed. 



