[ ^7 ] 



XXX^''. Account and Description of a Stone which fell from 

 the Clouds in the Commune of Sales, near ni/e-Franche, 

 in the Department of the Rhone. From a JMemoir of 

 M. Dp: Du£E, read in the National Institute April 11, 

 1S03*. 



W E have more than once entertained our readers with 

 phaenomena aualogous to that which is to be the subject of 

 the present uicmou-} and since the attention of" philoso- 

 phers has been directed to these sniguiar facts, one might 

 sav that they have been more frequent. We cannot, and 

 indeed ought not, to explain them until their existence has 

 been fully proved, and until all the circumstances by which 

 they are characterized are well known. The account 

 which we are about to transcribe is extracted froni a pretty 

 long m£moir on these phcenomena read some tin)e a^o 

 before the National Institute, by IVI. de Dree, brother-in- 

 law of Dolomieu, a verv enlightened amateur of mine- 

 ralogy, and possessor of one of the richest collections of 

 this kind in France. Among the facts which he collected, 

 the one about to be mentioned has a striking character of 

 authenticity; and it acquires a particular degree of in- 

 terest from a comparison which proved to us that we ob- 

 served the same meteor, without doubting, any more 

 than others who saw it either at Geneva or in the western 

 part of Swisserland as far as Berne, that it was one of 

 those stones the origin of which it is so difiicult to deter- 

 mine. 



*' In the month of February 1S02 I was at Lyons with. 

 Dr. Petetin, president of the Medical Society of that city, 

 member of several learned societies, and author of a work 

 entitled Kouvcuu MCcanisme de I'Electricite : we were con- 

 versing on scientific subjects, when he asked me whether I 

 had heard any thing of a meteor which appeared at Lyons 

 some years ago; and on my answering in the negative, he 

 related the fact, of which he \\ as a witness, in nearly the 

 following manner: 



" About four years ago (said he) during the evening twi- 

 light in the month of March, the weather being serene, and 

 not at all cloudy, there passed over Lyons, nearly in a di- 

 rection from east to west, a luminous Gall, which, as it at- 

 tracted attention by the strong light it emitted in its pas- 

 sage, was almost generally observed. He added, that he 

 learned a few days after that this luminous globe had been 



* From Dibli.tbc'^iic Britannique, vol. xxii. no. 4, A\'\\\ i£o3. 



scca 



