Previously to the memorable explosion above recited, no meteorites had been found in the hands of the inha bitants of this district of country, nor in the mineralo gical collections of the department, nor had the slight est intimation of them occurred in the geological docu ments of the environs of L'Aigle. We may also note, that the forges and mines of the district in question produce nothing similar in the form of dross or ore; that the soil exhibits no traces of volcanoes ; and tha! immediately consequent on the appearance of the me teor, a determined space of ground was strewed with stones of a peculiar character, and accompanied with circumstances which could not formerly have escaped observation. Again, nearly all the inhabitants of 20 ham lets, dispersed over the circumscribed space, declare that they were eye-witnesses of a terrible fall of stones pro jected from the meteor. The young, the old, and those in the prime of life, individuals of both sexes, simple peasants dwelling at a distance from one another, saga cious and rational workmen, respectable ecclesiastics, young soldiers devoid of fear, persons, in short, of vari ous manners, professions, and opinions, and united by no common ties, all concur in attesting a fact, which contributed neither directly nor indirectly to promote their own interest ; and they all assign the manifestation of this fact to the same day and the same hour. They moreover point to obvious and existing consequences of the fall of stony masses ; and they aver, in terms inca pable of ambiguity or misconstruction, that they really saw these masses roll down on roofs, break branches of trees, rebound from the pavement, and produce smoke when they lighted on the soil. These assertions, and their corroborative indications, refer to a portion of ter ritory which has been accurately defined, and beyond whose precincts not a single corresponding mass has been found, nor a single individual who alleges that he saw a stone fall. Such incontrovertible evidence, then, will preclude the necessity of dilating on cases of infe rior notoriety, and to which we are induced to advert, principally for the purpose of completing our chrono logical catalogue, and deducing the known series of an occurrence, the solution of which is still somewhat pro blematical.
July 4, 1803. A ball of fire struck the White Bull Inn, at East Norton, by which the chimney was thrown down, the roof partly torn off, the windows shattered to atoms, and the dairy, pantry, Sec. converted into a heap of ruins. It appeared like a luminous ball of consider able magnitude, and, on coming in contact with the house, exploded with a great noise and a very oppres sive sulphureous smell. Some fragments of it were found near the spot, and were subjected to chemical analysis by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who found them to consist of one-half siliceous clay, thirty five parts of oxidated iron, twelve of magnesia, and a small portion of nickel, with some sulphur. The sur face was dark and varnished, as if in a state of fusion, and bearing numerous globules of a whitish metal, con taining sulphur and nickel. From some indentures on the surface, it appeared probable that the ball was soft when it descended. Where the fragments fell, the her bage was burnt up. The meteor's motion in the air was yet.) rapid, and apparently parallel to the horizon. Liter. Journal.
October 5, 1803. Stones fell near Avignon. Bibl. Britan.
December 13, 1803. The inhabitants of the village of St. Nicholas, in Bavaria, were alarmed between eleven and twelve o'clock, noon, by a noise which resembled the report of several cannons. A peasant, who went out of his house to see what was the matter, observed the sky to become dark and gloomy, heard a singular hissing in the air, and perceived something fall on a barn with a loud noise. On entering the barn, he found a stone which had broken the rafters by its fall, was still warm, smelled of sulphur, and weighed three pounds and a quarter. It was covered by a thin, blackish, and ap parently bituminous incrustation. Its substance was of an ash-grey colour, earthy, and resembling hardened clay, hut without odour. It was found to contain small shining particles of native iron, small bright grains of martial pyrites, which yielded a black pow der when pounded, hard and very bright flattened masses, of a black and dark-brown hue, some minute grains of a cubical form, and small yellowish transpa rent lamina;, with glass glance, having the appear ance, but not the hardness, of quartz. Yellowish,
white, and metallic points, probably native nickel, were discovered by the microscope. The chemical analysis of 10,000 grains of this specimen, gave Iron, in the metallic state, 1800 Brown oxyd of do. . 2540 Regulus of nickel, . 1330 Magnesia, 3250 Silex, 1000 Supposed sulphur, .
10 ,000 Journal de Physique, Gilb. An. Voight's Mag.
April 5, 1304. Three men at work in a field at Possil, about three miles north from Glasgow, were alarmed by a singular noise, which seemed to proceed from the south-east to the north-west, and continued, as they supposed, for about two minutes. They com pared it, at first, to four discharges of cannon, after wards to the sound of a bell, or rather of a gong, with a violently whizzing noise ; and, lastly, they heard a sound, as if some hard body very forcibly struck the surface of the earth. At the same time, sixteen men who were at work in the Possil stone quarry, thirty feet under the surface of the soil, heard a noise like the discharge of artillery, and then like the sound of hard substances hurling downwards. over stones, and lasting, in the whole, for about the space of a minute. The overseer of the quarry, and a man who was on a tree, described the noise as if continuing about two minutes, apparently beginning in the west, and pass ing round by the south, towards the cast. at first like the firing of three or four cannons, at the distance of a mile and a half to the west of the quarry, and ter minating in a violent rushing, or whizzing. Along with these persons, there were two boys, one of ten, and the other of four years of age, and a dog, which, on hearing the noise, ran home, seemingly in great terror. The overseer, too, was considerably alarmed by a misty commotion which he observed in the at mosphere. " Come down," exclaimed he, to the man on the tree, " I think there is some judgment coming upon us." The man had scarcely got on the ground, when something struck, with great force, in a drain, at the distance of about ninety yards, splashing mud and water for twenty feet round. The elder boy observed the appearance of smoke in the air, and something of a reddish colour, moving rapidly from the west, till it fell on the ground. A moment before the stroke on the earth was heard, the younger boy called out " Oh ! sik a reek !" (such a smoke,) alluding to the smoke which he saw near the place where the body fell on the ground. On running up to this spot, the overseer observed a hole in the bottom of the drain, which was filling with water, about six inches of it remaining still empty. At the bottom of this hole he felt something hard, which he could not move with his hand. The operation of the shovel and mattock re vealed two pieces of stone, which had penetrated a few inches into the soft sandy rock, and eighteen inches below the bottom of the drain, the hole being about fifteen inches in diameter. He was not sensible of any particular heat in the water, or in the pieces of stone, nor of any uncommon smell in the latter, although he applied them to his nostrils. One of the pieces was about two inches long, the other about six inches long, four broad, and four thick, and blunted at the edges and end. The fractures of the two pieces exactly co incided ; but he could not say whether their separa tion had been effected by the violence of the fall, or a stroke of the mattock. As he conceived them to be merely pieces of whinstone, they were, at first, neglect ed ; but a carelul search being made for them, some days after, the smallest fragment was soon found. The largest, however, having been used as a block in the quarry, and having fallen among rubbish, could not be discovered; but a fragment of it was found some days after The two recovered morsels, one of ?shich is de posited in the Hunterian museum, in the university of Glasgow, formed the two extremes of the stone, and are characterized by the smooth black external coating, and the internal greyish aspect. The late Robert Craw ford of Possil, Esq. and several of the professors of the university. of Glasgow, were at pains to ascertain the preceding circumstances. Mr. Crawfurd remark ed, that both the fragments had a fishy, fetid smell, when he first received them. The day on which the phenomenon took place was cold and cloudy ; and the noise of the explosion was heard as far as Falkirk, which is about twenty-four miles to the east of Glas gow.