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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
set on fire by tlie fall of a meteoric stone ; and it is by no 
means a pleasant subject for reflection, tliat sucb a catastrophe 
might happen anywhere, and at any moment, especially when 
we remember that these stones, although not quite incan- 
descent, are always, more or less, in a heated state; and 
sometimes so hot that even after the lapse of six hours they 
could not be touched with impunity. 
The first fall of meteoric stones on record appears to have 
taken place about the year 654 b.c., when, according to a 
passage in Livy, a shower of stones fell on the Alban Hill, 
not far distant from Rome. The next in chronological order 
is mentioned by several writers, such as Diogenes of Apol- 
lonia, Plutarch, and Pliny, and described by them as a great 
stone, the size of two millstones, and equal in weight to a full 
waggon-load. It fell about the year 467 b.c., at H^gos Potamos, 
on the Hellespont, and even up to the days of Pliny, four 
centuries after its fall, it continued to be an object of curiosity 
and speculation. After the close of the first century we fail 
to obtain any account or notice of this stone ; but although 
it has been lost sight of for upwards of eighteen hundred 
years, the eminent Humboldt says, in one of his works, that 
notwithstanding all previous failures to re-discover it,* he does 
not wholly relinquish the hope that even after such a con- 
siderable lapse of time, this Thracian meteoric mass, which it 
would be so difficult to destroy, may be found again, especially 
since the region in which it fell has now become so easy of 
access to European travellers. 
The next descent of any particular importance took place 
at Ensisheim in Alsace, where an aerolite fell on November 
7th, 1492, just at the time when the Emperor Maximilian, then 
King of the Romans, happened to be on the point of engaging 
with the French army. It was preserved as a relic in the 
Cathedral at Ensisheim, until the beginning of the French 
revolution, when it was conveyed to the Public Library of 
Colmar, and it is still preserved there among the treasures. 
In later years the shower of aerolites which fell in April, 1808, 
at L^Aigle, in Normandy, may well rank as the most extraordi- 
nary descent upon record. A large fire-ball had been observed 
a few moments previously, in the neighbourhood of Caen and 
Alenpon, where the sky was perfectly clear and cloudless. At 
L’Aigle no appearance of light was visible, and the fire-ball 
assumed instead the form of a small black cloud, consisting of 
vapour, which suddenly broke up with a violent explosion, 
followed several times by a peculiar rattling noise. The stones 
at the time of their descent were hot, but not red, and smoked 
visibly. The number which were afterwards collected within 
an elliptical area measuring from six to seven miles in length. 
