Lampyris Italica.— Aerolite.—Almos. Phenomena. 67 
dispatched him.—The rabbit I took into my hands, without an 
effort on its part to resist or escape, and deposited it in my com- 
panion’s !ap: but it died before we reached the church. I am 
confident that the animal had sustained no bodily injury either 
from the snake or myself. 
LAMPYRIS ITALICA. 
M. Grorruus being lately at Rome, paid particular atten - 
tion to the phosphorescent organ of the Lampyris Italica. This 
insect plunged into water, continued luminous for several hours ; 
under oil of olives the light diminished after a quarter of an hour, 
and disappeared entirely after twenty minutes. The case was 
nearly the same with hydrogen . gas and carbonic acid. When 
the insect was withdrawn from this gas and transported imme- 
diately into an ordinary atmosphere, the phosphorescence recom- 
menced on the instant. Some Lampyre in which the phosphores- 
cent power was so far extinct that oxygen gas could not revive it, 
recovered it when plunged into an atmosphere of nitric vapours. 
When the phosphorescence became extinguished by the nitric 
vapour, it could no longer be developed by any other agent.— 
Grotthus’s Forschungen, 1820. 
—— 
AN AEROLITE. 
On the 15th of June last at three o’clock in the afternoon, and 
at the same instant when the high mountain called the Gerbier de 
Jone, near Aubenas (department of Ardeche), disappeared and 
gave place to a lake, a globe of fire which threatened to swallow 
up the whole village of Berias in the canton of Argentiere (same 
department) descended perpendicularly upon @ smiling valley 
near Croz, where it left after two strong detonations an aerolite 
of the weight of ninety-two kile grammes, sunk more than two 
metres into the ground.— Bib, Phys. Econ. 
ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA. 
Bamberg, December 25, 1821. 
Yesterday, about seven o’clock in the evening, the sky being 
clear and serene, there was observed in the neighbourhood of 
Battenheim and Altendorf an igneous meteor, of a globular form, 
about the apparent size of a full moon, which, after taking a di- 
rection from north-east to south-east, fell to the ground and dis- 
appeared, with an explosion as loud as the report of acannon. Its 
light was as strong as that of a bright flash of lightning. On the 
925th the mercury in the barometer fell lower than had ever been 
seen by the oldest inhabitants. 
[ This phanomenon, says a letter from Frankfort of the 31st 
ult., appears to have been seen at places very distant from each 
2 other. 
