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in great veneration, and show it to this day. It is said that Anaxagoras had 
foretold that one of those bodies, which are fixed to the vault of heaven, 
would one day be loosened by some shock or convulsion of the whole machine, 
and fall to the earth, for he taught that the stars are not now in the places 
where they were originally formed ; that being of a stony substance and 
heavy, the light they give is caused only by the reflection and refraction of 
the ether ; and that they are carried along, and kept in their orbits, by the 
rapid motion of the heavens, which from the beginning, when the cold pon- 
derous bodies were separated from the rest, hindered them from falling. 
But there is another and more probable opinion, which holds that falling 
stars are not emanations or detached parts of the elementary fire, that go 
out the moment they are kindled, nor yet a quantity of air bursting out from 
some compression, and taking fire in the upper region ; but that they are 
really heavenly bodies, which from some relaxation of the rapidity of their 
motion, or by some irregular concussion, are loosened and fall, not so much 
on the habitable part of the globe as into the ocean, which is the reason that 
their substance is seldom seen. 
Damachus, however, in his treatise concerning religion, confirms the opinion 
of Anaxagoras. He relates, that for seventy-five days together, before that 
stone fell, there was seen in the heavens a large body of fire, like an inflamed 
cloud, not fixed to one place, but carried this way and that with a broken 
and irregular motion ; and that by its violent agitation several fiery fragments 
were forced from it, which were impelled in various directions, and darted 
with the celerity and brightness of so many falling stars. After this body 
was fallen in the Chersonesus, and the inhabitants, recovered from their 
terror, assembled to see it, they could find no inflammable matter, or the 
least sign of fire, but a real stone, which, though large, was nothing to the 
size of that fiery globe they had seen in the sky, but appeared only as a bit 
crumbled from it. It is plain that Damachus must have very indulgent 
readers, if this account of his gains credit. If it is a true one, it absolutely 
refutes those who say that this stone was nothing but a rock rent by a 
tempest from the top of a mountain, which, after being borne for some time 
in the air by a whirlwind, settled in the first place where the violence of that 
abated. Perhaps, at last, this phenomenon, which continued so many days, 
was a real globe of fire ; and when that globe came to disperse and draw 
towards extinction, it might cause such a change in the air, and produce 
such a violent whirlwind, as tore the stone from its native bed, and dashed 
it on the plain. But these are discussions that belong to writings of another 
nature. 
Now this passage is most instructive, not only as to the 
ancient opinions held on the subject of falling stars and 
meteoric stones j but read by the light of well-known and 
authentic cases which I will afterwards bring before you, we 
see that Damachus, in spite of the scepticism of Plutarch 
and even of some of our modern philosophers, has given 
