METEORIC STONES. 221 



Memoirs of his own reign. The Prince relates, that in the 

 year 1620 (of our era), a violent explosion was heard at a 

 village in the Punjaub, and during the noise, a luminous 

 body fell from above on the earth. That the amnil (or fiscal 

 officer) of the district immediately repaired to the spot where 

 the body was said to have fallen, and having found it to be 

 still hot and not burnt up, caused it to be dug up ; when the 

 heat increasing, he at last came to a lump of iron violently 

 hot ; that this was sent to court, where the emperor had it 

 weighed in his presence, and ordered it to be forged into a 

 sabre, a knife, and a dagger ; that the workmen reported that 

 it was not malleable, but shivered under rhe stroke ; and that 

 it required to be mixed up with one-third part of common 

 iron, when the mass was found to make excellent blades. 

 The royal historian adds, that upon the incident of this iron 

 of lightning being manufactured, a poet presented him with a 

 distich, purporting that, " during his reign, the earth attained 

 order and regularity ; that raw iron fell from lightning, and 

 was, by his world-subduing authority, converted into a dagger, 

 a knife, and two sabres." 



The exact resemblance of the occurrence here related, in 

 all its essential circumstances, to the accounts of fallen stones 

 formerly detailed, and the particular observation upon the 

 unmalleable nature of the iron, give, it must be confessed, 

 a very great degree of credibility to the whole narrative, 

 and bestow additional weight on the inference previously 

 drawn from internal evidence, that the solitary masses of 

 native iron, found in different quarters of the globe, have the 

 same origin with the stones analyzed by Vauquelin and 

 Howard. 



We have now gone through the whole evidence, both with 

 respect to the circumstances in which these singular bodies 

 are found, the ingredients of which they are compounded, and 

 the outward appearance and structure which they exhibit : 

 we are next to consider the inferences respecting their pro- 

 bable origin, which this mass of information may warrant us 

 to draw. 



