S26 Account of some Remarkable Hail- Stones, 
the presence of the knife. The handle, and perhaps the blade 
also, would be dissolving, so that the bulk would be diminished ; 
and if the knife had not been altogether removed in this way, it 
would have produced less irritation, and he might have lived a 
considerable time. There is even some probability that the 
knife might, in the course of time, have made its way through 
the stomach and parietes of the abdomen, by inflammation, 
abscess and ulceration, as extraneous bodies have been frequent- 
ly brought from various internal parts to the external surface, 
by these processes, or by what some surgeons have termed pro- 
gressive absorption . 
Carlisle, March 1824. 
Art. XIV . — Account of some remarkable Hail-Stones. 
In the second part of the eleventh volume of the Nova Acta 
Physico-medica Academice Coes areas Leopoldina Carolina: Na- 
ture e Curiosorum , DrNbgerath informs us, that, on the 7th May 
1822, a tremendous hail-shower fell in and around Bonn. Its 
violence was so great, that not only the glass of all the windows 
in the district where it fell was broken, but even the roofs of 
the houses were shattered, and the hail-stones were so forcibly 
propelled, that the slates on the roofs were perforated as if by 
musket-bullets. Many men were wounded, numbers of wild 
and domesticated animals were killed, and the vineyards suffered 
much. The general size of the hail-stones was about one inch 
and a half in diameter, with a weight of nearly 300 grains. 
When whole, which was not generally the case, the general out- 
line was elliptical, or compressed globular, and the form cere- 
bral, or resembling the brain of a warm-blooded animal, m 
which the membranes had been removed. More frequently the 
form was lenticular, and appeared polished on the two ends, as 
if by friction. The masses had a concentric lamellar structure 
in the centre was a white, nearly opaque, nucleus, of a round or 
elliptical form, around which were arranged concentric layers, 
which increased in translucency from the innermost to the outei- 
most. They at the same time exhibited a beautiful stellular 
fibrous arrangement, caused by rows of air-bubbles disposed in. 
