July, 1755. A stone fell at Terra nuova, in Calabria, which weighed 7 oz. Domin. Tata.—October 20, 1755. A black dust, like lamp-black, fell in Shetland between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, when the sky was very hazy. This dust smelled strongly of sulphur, and covered the faces and hands, and blackened the linen of the people in the fields. As the wind blew from the south-west, it is not probable that it was eject ed from Hecla, which is situated between 500 and 600 miles farther north. Phil. Trans. vol I.—Nov. 15, 1755 A red sky, and the fall of red rain, in several countries. .4'%.,v .get ,Vat Cur t. ii —Oct. 9, 1763 Red rain at Cleves, Utrecht, &c. Mercurio. Histor. Polit Nov. 14, 1765. Red iron in Picardy. Richard.—End of July, 1766. When the sky was clear at Albereto, in the neighbourhood of Milan, it was dark and cloudy in the direction of the western hills, and in the valley to the north, with frequent thunder and lightning. Aouut five o'clock in the evening, when the peasants were dis persed over the fields. engaged in their rural labours, there was suddenly heard, not only in Albereto, but in other places at a considerable distance to the west, and even at Modena, an unusual noise, like the discharge of artillery, succeeded by a whizzing in the air, like that produced by a cannon bullet when powerfully propel led. The Duke of Modena's gardener even be,ieved that a cannon ball was descending into the garden. Others either did not hear the whizzing noise, ur had not paid attention to it. In Alhereto, however, it was not only heard. but a body was moreover seen travers ing the air with great velocity, and falling abruptly to the earth. To some of the distant hystanders it appear ed in a state of ignition ; but to two ladies, who were within a mile of the pot, it seemed opaque and smocking. They instinctively clung to a branch of a tree, hut an ox, which was near them, fell to the ground from ter ror. The stone, which diffused an odour of sulphur, had penetrated the soil to nearly the devil of a fathom, was still hut when taken up, and had the appearance of a sandstone of great weight, of an irregular triangular figure, with its external surface uniformly burnished over with black, as if from the effect of fire. The person who took it up broke it into pieces, and the fragments were distributed among different people in the town. Father Troili, who relates these circumstances, as they were communicated to him by eye-witnesses, and particularly by the individual, who, with the assistance of a young peasant, extracted the stone from the earth, published in the course of the same year a curious treatise, en titled, Della Caduta di un Sasso dall'Aria Ragionamento, &c. in which he adduces many excellent arguments to prove not only his own assertions, but the truth of the general doctrine of the descent of meteorites on various occasions. But we cannot learn that the reasoning of the Jesuit produced much impression on the public mind ; and certainly it had no weight with men of science. At the distance of half a century, however, the hook has been eagerly coveted by the learned ; and a copy, with the perusal of which we have been politely favoured by Thomas Allan, Esq. of this city, belongs to that gentleman's valuable repository. Vassalli, in his Physico Meteorological Letters, alludes to the fall of the Albereto stone ; and Beccaria likewise adverts to it in the postscript of his letter to Dr. Franklin, entitled, De Elcctricitate Vindice, having apparently procured his information of the fact from Fogliani, bishop of Modena, a highly respectable character, and a zealous naturalist. —August 15,1766. Between six and seven o'clock P. M. a small stone fell near Novellara, at a little distance from a poplar that was struck at the same time by lightning. But if Troili, who mentions the fact, be correct in his conjecture, it was a piece of the bark of the poplar vitri fied by lightning,—a supposition which seems to be scarcely admissible.
Sept. 13, 1768. The Abbe Bachelay acquaints us, that, about half past four o'clock in the afternoon, there appeared near the castle of Chevalerie, in the neighbourhood of Luce, a small town in the province of Maine, a stormy cloud, from which proceeded a peal of thunder, like the discharge of a cannon, which was succeeded by a sound so similar to the lowing of cattle, as to impose on several people who heard it, in a circuit of two leagues and a half, but unaccompanied with any perceptible flame. Some reapers, in the
parish of Perigue, about three leagues from Luce, on hearing the same noise, looked up, and saw an opaque body, which described a curve, and fell on soft turf on the high road, near which they were at work. They all quickly ran up to it, and found a sort of stone, nearly half of which was buried in the earth, and the whole so hot that it could not be touched. At first they fled in a panic ; but, on returning to the spot some time after, they found the mass precisely in the same situation, and sufficiently cooled to admit of being handled and narrowly examined. It weighed seven pounds and a half, and was of a triangular form, pre senting as it were three rounded horns, one of which, at the moment of the fall, had entered into the ground, and was of a grey or ash-colour, while the rest which was exposed to the air was very black. When the Abbe presented this stone to the Academy of Sciences, that body appointed Messrs. Lavoisier, Fougeroux, and Cadet, a committee, to examine and analyse it, a task which they performed with more care and accu racy than M. de Lalande had done on a preceding oc casion; but their trial was limited to an integral part of the whole, considered as a homogeneous substance, in place of being applied to each of the constituent parts. The result was Silica 55.5 Iron 36 Sulphur 8 99.5 The substance of the stone was of a pale ash-grey, speckled with an infinite number of minute and shining metallic points, visible through a magnifying glass. The thin black outer coating, which seemed to have been fused, alone gave a few sparks when struck with steel. Its specific gravity was 3.58. From the few small fragments of this meteorite which have been preserved, it seems to be nearly allied to those from Benares. The committee, very unwilling to allow that it could have descended from the air, conjectured that it had previously existed in the ground, and had merely been struck by the electric flash. The singu lar position in which it was found, however, with one of its angles inserted in the turf, was most likely not a permanent one : and really with respect to a matter of fact, subject to the cognizance of the senses, we may believe a rustic spectator, in preference to a philoso pher who speculates in his closet.
Another stone, of nearly the same composition, ac companied by the history of its fall at Aire, in Artois, was presented to the academy in the course of the same year, by NI. Gusson de Boyaval, honorary lieu tenant-general of the bailliage of Aire, to which was added, by the younger Morand, the specimen from Coutances. According to the academical report, these three stones, when compared, presented no difference to the eye, being of the same colour, and nearly of the same grain, interspersed with metallic and pyritous particles, and covered with a black and ferruginous incrustation. Their common aspect did not convince the academy that they had been conveyed to the earth, yet the coincidence of the attested circumstances in three places, distinctly separated from one another, and the characters which discriminated them from other stones, induced the learned body to announce their history, and to invite its discussion.
November 20, 1768. A stone fell at Mauerkirchen, near the Inn, in Bavaria, at four o'clock, P. M. which weighed thirty-eight pounds. It was of a triangular form, and eight inches in thickness. Its fall was pro claimed by a hissing noire, and great darkness in the air, and it penetrated two feet and a half into the soil. Imhof, in Gilb. ./In.—A detached fragment is preserved in the Imperial Cabinet of Vienna, another in the Ore villian Collection, and another in that of Robert Fer guson of Raith, Esq.