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wliicli he was inquisitive after, amongst other things told him 
that the water in his country would sometimes, in cold weather, 
he so hard that men walked upon it, and that it would hear an 
elephant if he were there.” To which the King replied, 
‘‘ Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, 
because I looked upon you as a sober, fair man, but now I am 
sure you lie.” The account thus related by Locke, of the King 
of Siam’s incredulity, was adduced by Hume as a specimen of 
“ just reasoning.” This kind of “just reasoning” has a parallel 
in the disbelief, up to the end of the last century, of the fall of 
stones from the sky. “ In the village of Suntgaw, near the 
townlet of Ensisheim, on the 7th November, 1492, between 
eleven and twelve o’clock a.m., there was a loud peal of thunder, 
and a prolonged confused noise was heard to a great distance, 
and a stone fell from the air which weighed 2601bs. There a 
child saw it strike on a field situated on the upper jurisdiction 
towards the Khine and Inn, near the district of G-isgard, which 
was sown with wheat, and did it no harm, except make a hole 
there; and then they conveyed it from the spot, and many 
pieces were broken from it, which the Landgvot forbade. When 
the people found this stone it had entered into the earth to the 
depth of a man’s stature. The Emperor Maximilian being in 
the neighbourhood on the Monday after St. Catherine’s Day of 
the same year, his Koyal Excellence ordered the stone which 
had fallen to be brought to the Castle, and having conversed a 
long time about it with the noblemen, he said the people of 
Ensisheim should take it and hang it up in the church, and not 
allow anybody to take anything from it.” It was accordingly 
hung up in the choir, “ where ” (as the chronicler says) “it is 
still suspended.” But it has since been transferred to Colmar; 
and portions of it maj^ now be seen in this country. The 
reasoning of the Emperor, however, not having been regarded 
as equally just with that of the King of Siam and the Northern 
sage, the account gained little or no credit with philosophers ; 
and M. Barthold announced to tlie scientific world the mass at 
Ensisheim to be merely an Argillo-ferruginous one of secondary 
formation, detached from an adjacent mountain, and conveyed 
to the spot on which it was found bv some torrent or land flood. 
