346 METEORS. 



Benares, saw the light, heard a report like a loud thunder 

 clap, and immediately after heard the noise of heavy 

 bodies falling in the neighborhood. Next morning the 

 mould in the fields was found to have been turned up in 

 many spots, and unusual stones of various sizes, but of 

 the same substances, were picked out of the moist soil, 

 generally from a depth of six inches. As the occurrence 

 took placer in the night, after the people had retired to 

 rest, the explosion and fall of the stones were not seen : 

 but the watchman of an English gentleman near Krakhut, 

 brought him a stone the next morning which he said had 

 fallen through the top of his hut, and buried itself in the 

 earthen floor. 



It seems quite impossible to deny very great weight to 

 all these testimonies, and many others that might be given, 

 several of them by intelligent eye witnesses, and others by 

 more ordinary persons indeed, but prepossessed by no the- 

 ory: all concurring in these descriptions; and examined 

 by acute and respectable persons, immediately after the 

 phenomena had occurred. Without offering any further 

 remarks then, on this mass of external evidence, we shall 

 only just notice the main points, which it seems to sub- 

 stantiate in a very satisfactory manner. It proves, then, 

 that, in various parts of the world, luminous meteors have 

 been seen moving through the air with surprising rapidi- 

 ty, in a direction more or less oblique, accompanied with 

 a noise, commonly like the whizzin.ii of a large shot, fol- 

 lowed by an explosion, and the fall of hard, stony, or 

 semi-metallic masses, in a heated state. The constant 

 whizzing sound; the fact of stones being found, similar 

 to each other, but unlike all others in the neighborhood, 

 at the spots towards which the luminous body, or its frag- 

 ments were seen to more ; the scattering or ploughing 

 up of the soil in these spots, always in proportion to the 

 size of the stones ; the concussion of the neighboring 

 ground at the time ; and especially the impinging of the 

 stones on bodies somewhat above the earth, or lying loose 

 on its surface are circumstances perfectly well authen- 

 ticated in these reports ; proving that such meteors are 

 usually inflamed hard masses, descending rapidly through 

 the air to the earth. 



