S.TONES FALLING FROM THE AIR. 
33 
had varied respecting the reality of the phenomenon of 
aerolites, and to what a degree in early times the wonderful 
descriptions of the fall of stones had been exaggerated by 
superstition, and were received and frequently considered as 
religious mysteries. When the sciences began to flourish 
again, philosophers were so much prejudiced against phenomena 
which appeared to them to accord so little with the laws of 
nature, that they disdained paying any attention to them, 
whilst the historians were eager to register in their annals a fact, 
to which the Emperor himself was a witness*. But in an age 
when every thing that could not be explained by reason, passed 
for an invention created by superstition, it was found'that learned 
men endeavoured, by the most specious reasoning, to annihilate 
the reality of a fact, to which the authority of ages could not 
induce them to admit, because they were unable to conceis’e the 
possibility of its happening. However, in the midst of these 
disputes which the great name of Gassendi-j- was unable to 
terminate, a great quantity of stones fell at Luc6 in 1/68, in 
the centre even of France j and notwithstanding this fact, which 
was clearly verified by evidence, the Academy of Sciences 
persisted in considering it as one of those popular prejudices 
which were beneath the attention of natural philosophers. The 
stones which afterwards fell in India, however, attracted the 
attention of the learned, but did not overcome all the pre- 
judices, and it required, iu short, the great number of aerolites 
1 which fell at rAigle,and at the gates of Paris, in order to confirm 
{ the reality of this singular phenomenon. Since that epocha, 
which goes no further back than 1803, the observations have 
I been so multiplied, that there is perhaps at this day no fact 
I better ascertained ; of course a doubt is no longer admitted. 
‘ This phenomenon is even so usual and frequent, that in seeing 
* On the 7th of November, 149?, in the nei^bonrhood of Ensisheim, 
I an aerolite fell near that prince at the moment when at the lie ad of his 
' troops he was going to give battle to the French army. 
t Gassendi gives an account of an aerolite which fell on the 27tb of 
I November, 16?7, on Monnt Vaiser in Provence. 
VoL. XXXVI.— No. 165. D 
