When intelligence of the event reached Benares, Mr. Davis dispatched a judicious person to make the re quisite inquiries. The natives, on being interrogated, mentioned, that they had either broken to pieces, or given to the collector and others, all the stones which they had gathered, but that others might still be found in the fields, by observing where the earth appeared to be recently turned up. Four were accordingly pro cured and brought to Mr. Davis. They had sunk about six inches deep into fields, which seemed to have been freshly watered, and about the distance of a hun dred yards from one another. The person deputed to obtain information, was likewise told by the inhabitants of the village, that, about eight o'clock in the even ing, when they had retired to their dwellings, they observed a very brilliant light, proceeding as from the sky, accompanied by a loud peal of thunder, which was immediately followed by the noise of heavy bodies falling in the neighbourhood. Uncertain whether some of their deities might not be concerned in this occur rence, they did not venture out till next morning, when the first circumstance which attracted their at tention was the broken appearence of the surface of the ground : and further investigation corroborated these particulars. Mr. M'Lane, a gentleman who re sided hard by Krak-hut, gave Mr. Howard part of a stone, which had been brought to him by the watch man who was on duty at his house. This, he said, had fallen through the top of his hut, which was close by, and bulled itself several inches in the floor, which was of hardened earth. At the time that this meteor appeared, the sky was perfectly serene, and not a cloud had been seen since the Itch of the month, nor had any been observed for many clays after.
46 Of these stones," says Mr. Howard, 66 I have seen eight, nearly perfect, besides parts of several others, which had been broken by the possessors, to distribute among their friends. The form of the more perfect ones appeared to be that of an irregular cube, round ed off at the edges; but the angles were to be observ ed on most of them. They were of various sizes, from about three to upwards of four inches in their largest diameter; one of them, measuring four inches and a quarter, weighed two pounds twelve ounces. In ap pearance they were exactly similar : externally, they were covered with a hard black coat, or incrustation, which, in some parts, had the appearance of varnish, or bitumen ; and on most of them were fractures, which, from their being covered with matter similar to that of the coat, seemed to have been made in the fall, by the stones striking against each other, and to have passed through some medium, probably an intense heat, previous to their reaching the earth. Internally, they consisted of a number of small spherical bodies of a slate colour, embedded in a whitish gritty sub stance, interspersed with bright shining spieulx, of a metallic or l)yritical nature. The spherical bodies were much harder than the rest of the stone : the white gritty part readily crumbled, on being rubbed with a hard body ; and on being broken, a quantity at tached itself to the magnet, but more particularly the outside coat or crust, which appeared almost wholly at tractable by it.
" It is well known there are no volcanoes on the con tinent of India ; and, as far as I can learn, no stones have been met with in the earth in that part of the world, which bear the smallest resemblance to those above described."
The history of the Benares meteor, then, speaks too distinctly for itself to stand in need of commentary.
April 5, 1799. Stones fell at Batonrouge, on the Mis sissippi. Belfast Chronicle of the IVar.
April 5, 1800. At night, a body wholly luminous was seen to move over a portion of America with pro digious velocity. Its apparent size was that of a large house seventy feet long, and its elevation above the surface of the earth about 200 yards. It diffused a light little inferior to that of the sun ; and those who saw it perceived a considerable degree of heat, but no electrical sensation. Immediately after it disappeared in the north-west, with a violent rushing noise, which in a few seconds was followed by a t•emenduous crash, and a very sensible vibration of the earth. Search being afterwards made in the place where the burning body fell, every vegetable was found burnt, or greatly scorch ed, and a considerable portion of the earth's surface broken up.
" We have to lament," remarks Mr. Howard, " that the authors of this account did not search deeper than the surface of the ground. Such an immense body, though moving in a horizontal direction, could not but be bu tied to a considerable depth. Should it have been more than the semblance of a body of a peculiar nature, the lapse of ages may perhaps effect what has now been neglected, and its magnitude and solitary situation be come the astonishment of future philosophers." Philos. Mag.
1801. M. Bory de St. Vincent, the ingenious author of Voyage dans les quatres principales Isles des Mers d'4frique, relates, (tom. p. 253,) that in consequence of particular instructions from NI. Hubert, he had, when on the Isle aux Tonneliers, made diligent search for the fragments of a stone which had been broken, and employed in the construction of a wall. Of these fragments he discovered three ; one about the size of a melon, but too fast locked in the plaster to be detached, and the other two about the size of an orange each, and which were easily separated. They all evidently be longed to the same mass, and, though their fracture had become rusty, one side of their external surface exhibi ted, like certain lavas, a dark and polished tint, while their identity with stones reputed atmospheric seemed to leave no doubt of their origin. In regard to their history, M. Descombes informed the author, that some time before, probably in the year 1801, the ladies of the district were walking on the quay during a beauti ful moonlight night, when all of a sudden they perceiv ed a luminous cloud advancing from the west, and ex ploding with a very loud noise like the report of a can non, but much more hollow, disclosing at the same time a beautiful ball of fire, in appearance perfectly sphe rical, and about a foot in diameter. When it broke from the cloud in which it had been conveyed, it was supposed to be half a league from the shore, to which it tended in a uniformly slanting direction, till it seem ed to fall on the Isle aux Tonneliers. Several persons in the island of Bourbon affirmed, that on the same day, and at the same hour, they observed a luminous point in the air which, from the path of its motion, could be no other than this glebe of fire.