1804, or 1807. A stone fell near Dordrecht. ran Beck-Calkoen.
October 6, 1804. A violent explosion was heard, near Apt, in the department of Vaucluse, and for fif teen leagues round, accompanied by an extraordinary hissing, and the fall of a stone of about seven pounds weight. It was presented, by the minister of the in terior, to the National Institute ; and Vauquelin, who alludes to it in No. 144 of the dnnales de Chimie, as serts, that all its physical characters, and the details of the judicial report concerning it, are in perfect unison with our present state of knowledge on the subject. It is, however, worthy of remark, that the detonation was preceded by no luminous meteor. Laugier re ports, as the results of the chemical analysis of the stone, 9669.
March 25, 1805. Stones fell near Doroninsk, at no great distance from the river Indoga, in the govern ment of Irkutsch, in Siberia. Gilb. An.
June, 1805. Hair Kougas Ingigian, author of a work, entitled -Eghang-Buzankian. printed at Venice, in 1807, makes mention of several stones having fallen in one of the public squares of Constantinople, called Etmeydany. Hair Mesrob Vartabetc, an Armenian, conversant in chemistry, mineralogy, and in the play sical and mathematical sciences in general, translated the passage which gives an account of this event, into French, for the perusal 01 M. Tonneher ; and the lat ter, in the Journal of Mines for February, 1808, brief ly states, that the descent of the stones took place in broad day, and with great violence ; that the people believed it to be the work of evil spirits ; that the agents of police verified the fact ; and that a guard of Janissaries was stationed on the spot, for three succes sive days and nights. The smell of sulphur which ac companied the fall, and the black and scorched crust of the pieces collected, scarcely permit us to doubt that they were genuine meteorites.
March 16, 1806. In the Journal de Physique, for June 1806, there is a short account of the fall of two aerolites, (for so they are termed in the report,) by Dr. Pages and M. Dhombres-Firmas, both members of the Academy of Ghent. The particulars are nearly as fol
low : At half-past five o'clock in the evening, the inha bitants of Alais, and the neighbouring parishes, heard two loud explosions, between which only a few se conds intervened, and which were both supposed to be the discharge of cannon. The rolling noise which succeeded, lasted ten or twelve minutes. Some drops of rain had fallen in the morning ; the sky was clear at mid-day ; but clouds occasionally obscured the sun in the afternoon, when the centigrade thermometer in dicated a maximum of + 12.5. The heavens became more cloudy and dark after the detonations. The Sicurs Penarier, father and son, who were in the fields adjoining to the village of St. Etienne de L'Olm, about twelve kilometers from Alais, heard the two ex plosions, which were not preceded by lightning, and which they at first supposed to be the firing of cannon at St. Htppolyte-le-fort ; but the rolling sound which succeeded, and which seemed to them to describe a curve in the heavens, from west to south, and from south to east, quickly undeceived them. As they looked more attentively at the clouds, an extraordinary hissing noise succeeded the rolling, and they dis tinctly perceived a blackish body proceeding from the clouds, obliquely advancing towards them from the )orth, and which, after passing over their heads, fell in a corn-field below the village, and broke in shivers, with a considerable noise. Accompanied by several of the alarmed villagers, they immediately went in quest of it, and found that it had pierced the soil, and bro ken into dispersed fragments against a rocky stratum, only small splinters, which were diluted by the rain that fell two days after, remaining in the hollow form ed by the falling mass. From the respective weights of the fragments, it was supposed that that of the en tire stone might be 4010 grammes. Its form, so far as could be inferred from the fragments, was irregular and angular ; and it was black internally as well as on the surface, which last seemed to have undergone the action of fire.