588 COSMOS. 



put an end to the scepticism of the academists. A large fire- 

 ball, which moved from S.E. to N.W., was seen at one 

 o'clock in the afternoon at AlenQon, Falaise, and Caen, while 

 the sky was quite clear. Some moments afterwards there was 

 heard near Aigle (Dep. de L'Orne), an explosion in a small, 

 dark, almost motionless cloud, lasting for five or six minutes, 



was seen flying in the sky above the town of Crema. The 

 peacock appeared to change into a pyramid, and was carried 

 from west to east with such rapidity, that in a moment it 

 seemed to traverse the whole hemisphere, as some learned 

 men imagined who saw it. Immediately afterwards such 

 darkness arose from the denseness of the clouds as was never 

 known by mortal before. During this midnight gloom, un- 

 heard-of thunders, mingled with awful lightnings, resounded 

 through that quarter of the heavens." The illuminations were 

 so intense, that the inhabitants round Bergamo, could see the 

 whole plain of Crema during the darkness. " Ex horrendo 

 illo fragore quid irata natura in earn regionem pepererit, per- 

 cunctaberis. Saxa demisit in Cremensi planitie (ubi nullus 

 unquam sequans ovum lapis visus fait) immensse magnitu- 

 dini, ponderis egregii. Decem fuisse reperta centilibralia 

 saxa ferunt." " You will perhaps inquire what accompanied 

 that terrific commotion of nature. On the plain of Crema, 

 where never before was seen a stone the size of an egg, there 

 fell pieces of rock of enormous dimensions and of immense 

 weight. It is said that ten of these were found weighing a 

 a hundred pounds each. Birds, sheep, and even fish were 

 killed." Under all these exaggerations it may still be seen, 

 that the meteoric cloud out of which the stones fell, must have 

 been of uncommon blackness and thickness. The " pavo " was 

 undoubtedly a long and broad-tailed fire-ball. The terrible 

 noise in the meteoric cloud is here represented as the thunder 

 accompanying the lightning (?). Anghiera himself received 

 in Spain a fragment, the size of a fist (exfrustris disrupt orum 

 saxorum\ and showed it to King Ferdinand the Catholic, in the 

 presence of the famous warrior Gonzalo de Cordova. His 

 letter ends with the words : " Mira super hisce prodigiis con- 

 scripta fanatice, physice, theologice ad nos missa sunt ex 

 Italia. Quid portendant, quomodoque gignantur, tibi utraque 



