450 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 
cumstances of this event, that no one may doubt its authenticity. 
All the other monks of the convent of St. Mary hastened up to 
him who had been struck, as well from curiosity as from pity, 
and among them was also the canon Manfredo Settala. They 
all carefully examined the corpse, to discover the most secret 
and decisive effects of the shock which had struck him. They 
found that it was in one of the thighs, where they perceived a 
wound blackened either by the gangrene, or by the action of 
the fire. Impelled by curiosity, they enlarged the aperture to 
examine the interior of it; they saw that it penetrated to the 
bone, and were much surprised to find at the bottom of the 
wound a roundish stone which had made it, and had killed this 
monk in amanner equally terrible and unexpected. This stone 
weighed about a quarter of an ounce, it had a sharp edge, and 
its surface resembled one of those silver coins which are cur- 
rent at Milan under the name of Filippo. It was not, however, — 
perfectly round, having on one side a rather obtuse angle. Its 
colour varied so, that on one part it was that of a burnt brick, 
and on the other it seemed to be covered with a thin ferrugi- 
neous shining crust. Being broken in the middle it emitted an 
insupportable smell of sulphur.” This appears to be the only 
instance known, in which these stones have killed or wounded 
persons. 
5. Earthquake at Aleppo.—Violent earthquakes, which began 
August 13, and continued, at times, to the 16th, have almost 
destroyed Aleppo. It is said that two-thirds of the houses 
were made ruins. The Captain of a French vessel reported 
that two rocks at the time of the:earthquake had arisen from 
the sea in the neighbourhood of Cyprus, which is almost under 
the same latitude as Aleppo. 
6. Earthquake.—A smart shock of an earthquake was felt at 
Dunston, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, between one and two on the 
morning of September 18th, accompanied by a loud noise like 
distant thunder. 
7. Dutrochet on the Influence of Motion on the Direction of 
Vegetables.—The following is an extract from a memoir, by the 
above philosopher, and is translated almost verbatim from the 
Journal de Physique. 
The experiments of Messrs. Hunter and Knight on the direc- 
tion taken by the plumula and radicle of germinating grains, 
when subjected to an uninterrupted rotary motion, are well 
known. Hunter observed that a bean placed in the centre of a 
barrel full of earth, and moved by water round its horizontal 
axis, had its radicle directed along the axis of the barrel. 
M. Knight found that grains, placed on the circumference of a 
