72 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Amongst the earliest records of meteorites may be mentioned 

 one spoken of by Pliny, which fell in Thrace, 467 B. C. and was 

 still in existence in his time. This he describes as about the size of 

 a wagon. The Chinese records go back 644 B. C. to 333 A, D. 

 Anaxagoras, Diogenes and Plutarch, all agreed on meteorites, and 

 though ignorant of the comet-lore of to-day, believed they were 

 always rotating invisible to us. A large meteoric stone is recorded 

 at Lucania 54 B. C. In Saxony (Annales Fuldenses) a great shower 

 of stones in 823 A. D., destroyed men and cattle, and fired 35 vil- 

 lages; 921, loio, 1164 and 1304, were remarkable for them. In 

 1492, one fell in Alsace weighing 260 lbs., and is still shown in the 

 church at Ensisheim. In 1501, at Padua, 1200 stones fell, one 

 weighing 160 lbs. and another 60 lbs. In 151 1 a heavy fall occur- 

 red in Crema. In 1676 a large one burst over Leghorn, and the 

 fragments fell into the sea. In 1790 a shower of stones fell at Aden. 

 Later records are more detailed than earlier ones, where superstiti- 

 ous awe seems to have retarded investigation or description. In 

 1803, at L'Aigle, in France, a cloud appeared, out of which, during 

 explosions lasting five or six minutes, and described as terrific thun- 

 der, a large number of stones fell. In 1807 an aerolite of 140 lbs. 

 fell at Smolensk, in Russia, and in 1808, in Moravia, between 200 

 and 300 fell. At Brandenburg and Potsdam, and in England, a 

 deposit of dust was noticed on the water, buildings, etc., after me- 

 teoric displays in 1818 and 1822, and in 1856 the decks of a vessel 

 240 miles off land, in the Indian Ocean, were covered with a fall of 

 stones the size of shot, which microscopical examination proved 

 were of true cosmical origin, and not volcanic, as was first suspected. 

 In 1783 a bright meteor was seen from Greenwich Observatory, and 

 noticed all over England, the diameter of which was estimated at 

 one mile, and its speed at 1000 miles a minute. No fragments of 

 it were known to have been found, but after its explosion the sound 

 took ten minutes reaching the earth. 



Speaking of the sound, I have no doubt that the " thunder in 

 a cloudless sky " spoken of in the earliest records of Latium, and 

 deemed such an ill omen by soothsayers, must have originated from 

 meteoric concussion. 



In 1807 a large shower of meteoric stones fell at Weston, in 

 Connecticut, of which a full account was pubhshed by Professors 

 Silliman and Kingsley, of Yale College. In the British Museum 



