several hundred persons, inhabitants of the place; and several learned men wrote the very same account to their scientific correspondents; one of those (son of the celebrated chemist M. D'Arcet) mentions two additional and important circumstances, from his own observation: viz. that the stones, when they fell on the houses, had not the sound of hard and compact substances, but of a matter in a soft, half-melted state; and that such of them as fell upon straws adhered to them, so as not to be easily sepa rated. That these stones broke the roofs of houses, and were found with pieces of straw under, and adhering to them, is a clear proof of their falling from above, and in a state of fusion.

December 18, 1795, several persons, near Captain Topham's house, in Yorkshire, heard a loud noise in the air, followed by a hissing sound, and soon after felt a shock, as if a heavy body had fallen to the ground at a little distance from them : in fact, one of them saw a huge stone fall to the earth, at eight or nine yards from the place where he stood; it was seven or eight yards above the ground when he first observed it: in its fall it threw up the mould on every side, and buried itself twenty-one inches deep : the stone, being raised, was found to weigh 561b.

March the 17th, 1798, a body, burning very brightly, passed over the vicinity of Ville Franche, on the Saone, a little to the east of Lyons, in France, accompanied with a hissing noise, and leaving a luminous track behind it. This phenomenon exploded with a great noise, about 1200 feet from the ground; and one of the splinters, still luminous, being observed to fall in a neighbour. ing vineyard, was traced: at the spot a stone was found, about a foot diameter, which had penetrated twenty inches into the ground.

While these circumstances in Europe were daily confirming the original, but long exploded idea of the vulgar, that many of the luminous meteors observed in the atmosphere, are masses of ignited matter, an account of a phenomenon, of precisely the same de. scription, was received from the East Indies, vouched by authority particularly well adapted to procure general respect. Mr. Wil. liams, F.R.S. residing in Bengal, hearing of an explosion, with a descent of stones, in the province of Bahar, diligently enquired into the circumstances, among the Europeans on the spot. He learned, that on December 19, 1798, at eight o'clock in the even. ing, a large fire ball, or luminous meteor, was seen at Benares,

and other parts of the country: that it was attended with a loud rumbling noise; and that, about the same time, the inhabitants of Krakhut, fourteen miles from Benares, saw the light, heard like a loud thunder-clap, and immediately after heard the noise of heavy bodies falling in the neighbourhood. Next morning the mould in the fields was found to have been turned up in many spots; and unusual stones of various sizes, but of the same substances, were picked out of the moist soil, generally from a depth of six inches. As the occurrence took place in the night, after the people had retired to rest, the explosion and the fall of the stones were not seen: but the watchman of an English gentleman, near Krakhut, brought him a stone the next morning, which he said had fallen through the top of his hut, and buried itself in the earthern floor.

Several of the preceding accounts notice the material circumstance, of damage done to interposed objects by the falling stones. In one instance, not yet mentioned, still more distinct traces were left, to show that their progress was through the air: viz. during the explosion of a meteor near Bourdeaux, the 20th of August 1789, a stone, about fifteen inches diameter, fell through the roof of a cottage, and killed a herdsman and some cattle. Part of this stone is now in the Museum of the Right Honorable Charles Greville, and the rest in that of Bourdeaux. See Mr. Greville's paper in the Phil. Trans. for 1803, pt. 1.

Hence it seems quite impossible to deny very great weight to all these testimonies, and many others that might be given; several of them by intelligent eye-witnesses, and others by more ordinary persons indeed, but prepossessed by no theory; all concurring in their descriptions; and examined by acute and respectable persons, immediately after the phænomena had occurred. Without offering any further remarks then, on this mass of external evidence, we shall only just notice the main points which it seems to substantiate in a very satisfactory manner. It proves then, that, in various parts of the world, luminous meteors have been seen moving through the air with surprising rapidity, in a direction more or less oblique, accompanied with a noise, commonly like the whizzing of large shot, followed by explosion, and the fall of hard, stony, or semimetallic masses, in a heated state. The constant whizzing sound; the fact of stones being found, similar to each

other, but unlike all others in the neighbourhood, at the spots towards which the luminous body or its fragments were seen to move; the scattering or ploughing up of the soil at those spots, always in proportion to the size of the stones; the concussion of the neighbouring ground at the time; and especially the impinging of the stones on bodies somewhat above the earth, or lying loose on its surface-are circumstances perfectly well authenticated in these reports; proving that such meteors are usually inflamed hard masses, descending rapidly through the air to the earth.

Having drawn this conclusion from the consideration of the more plain and obvious circumstances of these stones and meteors; we may now advert to those of the more close and intimate examination of the stones themselves: and this we find at once strengthening the foregoing conclusion, and conducting to a further knowledge of the subject, than is afforded by the mere external evidence only.

The reports of all those persons who saw and observed the meteors, and found the stones in the several places, after the explosions, uniformly agree, in describing those substances as dif. ferent from all the neighbouring bodies, and as presenting, in every case, the same external appearance of semi-metallic matter, coated on the outside with a thin black crust, and bearing strong marks of recent fusion. Besides this general resemblance, obvious to the most ordinary inspection, many of those singular substances have been most carefully examined by some of the first chemists and naturalists of the age, and their investigations have put us in possession of a mass of information, sufficient to convince the most scrupulous inquirer, that the bodies in question have a common origin, and that we are totally unacquainted with any natural process which could have formed them on our globe.

The more nice and chemical examination of those stones has been made by Messrs. De la Lande, Lavoisier, Fougeraux, Cadet, Vanquelin, Barthold, Count de Bournon, our learned country. man, Mr. Howard, and several other ingenious men; and all their reports agree in representing them of a similar nature and composition, formed of the same simple materials, of nearly the same specific weight, and with very slight variations in the proportions of the component parts, forming the aggregate of these masses. Mr. Howard and the Count de Bournon found that the specific

gravities of all the stones were nearly the same, excepting that the greater abundance of iron in one of them caused a considerable increase in its gravity.

Spec. Grav.

The Enisheim stone.. 3233
Benares.
Sienna

From their researches it appears, that the specific gravities of some of the more remarkable stones, are as in the annexed table, considering 1000 as the proportionate number for the specific gravity of water. From whence it appears, that in this respect they greatly exceed all the known ordinary stones, and approach to those of the metallic

ores.

3352

3418

Gassendi's...... 3456

Yorkshire...... 3508

Bachelay's......3535

Bohemia.

4281

All the stones examined by Count de Bournon and Mr. Howard were found to consist of four distinct substances, viz. small me. tallic particles, a peculiar martial pyrites, a number of globular and elliptical bodies, also of a peculiar nature, and an earthy cement surrounding the other component parts. The nature of the metallic particles was the same in all, being in each an alloy of iron and nickel. In the pyrites, nickel as well as iron was detected; and the easy decomposition of the pyrites, by muriatic acid, afforded a distinguishing character of that substance. The globules contained silica, magnesia, and oxides of nickel and iron. The earthy cement consisted of the same substances, very nearly in the same proportions.

M. Vauquelin also, about the same time as Mr. Howard, analysed the Benares stones, and two others which fell in 1789 and 1790, in the south of France; and the results of his experiments agreed with those of Mr. Howard in every particular. So that we are now authorised to conclude, that the stones which have at different times fallen down on the earth, in England, France, Italy, and India, are exactly of the same nature, consisting of the same simple substances arranged in similar compounds, in nearly the same proportions, and in the same manner combined, so as to form heterogeneous aggregates, whose general resemblance to each other is complete. We are hence also warranted in another important inference, viz. that no other bodies have as yet been dis. covered on our globe, which contain the same ingredients; and

that the analysis of these stones has brought us acquainted with a species of pyrites not formerly known, nor any where else to be found.

The general analogy between these stones, and the masses of native iron that have been found in different parts of the world, was too striking to escape the notice of the eminent inquirers who have investigated this subject. They resemble each other in their external character, though not so closely as the stones themselves; but in one circumstance of their chemical composition they have a notable similarity, both among themselves, and to the stony sub. stances. M. Proust had before proved, that the enormous mass of native iron found in South America, contained in its composition a large portion of nickel. Mr. Howard has been led to the same conclusion by analyzing another portion of the same; and he has also found, that the like solitary masses discovered in Siberia, Bohemia, and Senegal, contained a mixture of the same metal with iron, though in various proportions. The Bohemian iron is an alloy, of which nickel forms eighteen parts in 100; in the Siberian iron it forms seventeen; and in the Senegal iron five or six. But what is still more striking, and tends to put the similarity of their origin beyond all doubt, the Siberian mass is interspersed with cavities, containing an earthy substance, of the very same nature as the earthy cement and globules of the Benares stone; and the proportions of the ingredients are also nearly alike, except only in the oxide of iron, which is considerably less in the Siberian earth. This remarkable fact greatly strengthens the idea, that the Siberian iron owes its origin to the same causes which formed and projected the different stones that have fallen through the air on the earth; and, joined to the other details of the analysis, it naturally leads us to conclude, that the masses of native iron, as they are called, differ in no respect from the metallic particles, or the alloy of iron and nickel, which constitute one of the four aggregate parts in every stone of this kind hitherto examined.

Concerning the Siberian iron, there exists a general tradition of the Tartars, that it formerly fell from the heavens. In addition to which, a pretty authentic testimony has been lately found, to prove the fall of a similar body in India. The Right Honourable Charles Greville has communicated to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans. 1803, pt. 1) a very interesting paper, translated from the