342 Ob/fervations on Fire-Balls. 
proceeded, in all probability, from the fame meteor which 
in the Courfe of its fomewhat ferpentine courfe, as is ufual, 
may have made feveral explofions. Ancient authors, fuch as 
Pliny, Plutarch and Livy relate various inftances of {tones 
that fell from the heavens, which are commonly confidered 
as fabulous; but which, on account of the number of new 
obfervations of the like kind, may be confidered as real phe- 
nomena of nature.. Avicenna mentions a fulphureous kind 
of ftone which fell from the atmofphere at Cordeva in 
Spain*. It is related in Spangenberg’s Chronicon Saxoni- 
cum, that two large ftones fell at Magdeburg, in the year 
998, with loud explofions like thunder. Cardan relates +, 
that in the year 1510 feveral large ftones fell from. the 
heavens, which were moftly of a ferruginous. colour, ex- 
ceedingly hard, and, when found, ftill exhaled a fulphureous 
vapour. We are affured by Julius Scaliger ft, that he him- 
felf had in his poffeffion a piece of iron which fel] from the 
atmofphere in Sayoy. Mufchenbroek § and various other 
writers mention a blackifh ftone of 300 pounds weight ex~ 
hibiting traces of fire, which fell at Enfifheim in.Alface in 
1492 or 1493, and which was faid to be preferved in the 
church of that place. In the fummer of the year 1766 a 
{tone fell from the clouds at Alboreto, in the duchy of Mo- 
dena, which is briefly mentioned by Vaffalli in his Phyfico- 
metcorological Letters |], and on which Troili has written 2 
treatife. In the Breflau collection refpeéting natural hiftory 
four inftances are quoted of ftones having dropped from the 
heavens. Five ftenes, as large as a man’s head, exceedingly 
heavy, of a rufty iron colour, and having a ftrong {mell of 
fulphur, fell from the heavens with explofions and a dread- 
ful concuffion of the air at Mifcoz in Tranfylvania, in the 
* In Averrhces Meteor. lib. ii. cap. 2. 
+ De Rerum Varietate, lib. xiv. c. 72. 
t De Subtilitate Exercit. 323. 
§ Effai de Phyfique, tom. ii. feét. 1557. 
i Lettere fifico-meteorologiche, p. 120. 
4 year 
