Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 24^1 



to heat und smoke, the black colour being relieved wiiere the crust 

 had been broken, and a little of the clayey soil in whicli it was buried 

 in its descent still adhered to it. it had the curved indentations 

 usual in meteorites, as if it had been soft and had yielded to impres- 

 sions ; and lustrous metallic points appeared through the ground co- 

 lour, which had generally a bluish slaty appearance, but no such 

 rock was known in the neighbourhood. Mr. Post took the travellers 

 by torch-light to see the place where the mass fell. He was at the 

 time in company with a young man on horseback ; they heard over- 

 head a whizzing sound ; the whole atmosphere appeared to be in 

 commotion ; they compared the sound to that of chain shot, or of 

 platoon firing. Nothing was visible ; but their attention being di- 

 rected by the sound towards a large pine-tree east of them, they 

 heard the stone strike " with a dull, heavy jar of the ground," while 

 the dog, in terror, crouched at his mastei-'s feet. 



Mr. Post (in his peculiar language) had sighted the sound, and 

 his negro man ploughing in a field had done the same from a dif- 

 ferent direction, and by ranging with the aid of these intersecting 

 lines, they the next morning found the stone, which had splintered 

 a pine log lying on the ground ; by sounding with a sharp stick in 

 the hole made by the stone in its fall, they soon found it, and extri- 

 cated it from its hiding-place, which was ten inches below the sur- 

 face ; the dried leaves which had been " driven about by the per- 

 cussion," aided in discovering the spot, about three hundred yards 

 from the place where Mr. Post had stood at the moment of the fall, 

 which was in the woods, but there were no marks on the trees, 

 although the impression was that numerous small bodies had fallen, 

 " making a noise like hot rocks thrown into the water." 



Mr. Gibbon and his companion viewed the place both by torch and 

 daylight, and were convinced of the accuracy of the statement. 



The people of the vicinity imagined that a rock had been thrown 

 up from a volcano or from blasting, or had come from the moon, and 

 were not easily persuaded that it could be formed in the atmosphere. 



As is usual in cases of extraordinary celestial phsenomena, some 

 were terrified by the supposed approach of the day of judgement, or 

 of war, or some other dire calamity ; and a militia colonel, in a spirit 

 quite professional, said that " there must be war in heaven, for they 

 were throwing rocks." 



At the request of Dr. Andrews, the stone vvas diverted from another 

 destination, in favour of Prof. Charles U. Shepard, of the Medical 

 College of South Carolina at Charleston, from whom we learn that 

 at a recent date the specimen had not yet reached him. 



In due time we shall have the result of his scientific examination ; 

 but from the circumstances we have no hesitation in admitting this 

 case as genuine : the facts are perfectly familiar to hundreds on re- 

 cord, and in many particulars are in accordance with the remarkable 

 event of this nature which happened in Weston, Connecticut, in 

 December, 1807, and with which the senior editor of this Journal, 

 with his college colleague, Prof. Kingsley, was at the time familiar. 

 There is no room to discuss theories, but we feel fully assured that 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. 36. No. 242. March 1850. R 



