POUTION OF THE COSMOS. AEROLITES. 439 



fall of a stone at Benares, in Hindostan, on the 13th 

 of December, 1798; and that which took place at Aigle, 

 in the Departement de FOrne, on April 26th, 1803. 

 This last-named phenomenon which, of all those that 

 have been enumerated, is the one which has been most 

 carefully examined and described (by Biot), and which 

 occurred twenty-three centuries after the fall of the 

 great stone in Thrace, and three centuries after a friar 

 had been killed by an aerolite at Crema ( 703 ), finally pre- 

 vailed over the scepticism which appears to be indigenous in 

 academical bodies. The following is the description of the 

 phsenomenon of 1803 : At Alen9on, Falaise, and Caen, at 

 1 P.M., a large ball of fire was seen moving from S.E. to 

 N.W., with an everywhere perfectly clear sky. A few mo- 

 ments later, at Aigle, an explosion lasting five or six minutes 

 was heard, taking place in a dark, almost motionless, very 

 small cloud : it was followed by three or four detonations 

 like cannon-shots, and by a noise resembling the fire of 

 small arms and the roll of many drums. At each explosion 

 some of the vapours forming the small dark cloud were seen 

 to detach themselves and float away. At this place no lumi- 

 nous phenomena were perceived. At the same time there 

 fell, on an elliptically shaped piece of ground, of which the 

 major axis, running from S.E. to N.W., was nearly five 

 English miles in length (1*2 German geographical mile), 

 many meteoric stones, of which the largest weighed 

 17 pounds. The stones were hot, but not red hot ( 704 ), 

 smoked sensibly, and, which is a very striking circumstance, 

 were more easily broken in the few first days after their fall 

 than subsequently. I have purposely dwelt the longer on 

 this phenomenon, because I wish to compare it with one 

 A A 2 



