It may, moreover, be proper to premise, that al though we have adopted Dr. Cnladni's revised cata logue of meteoric appearances, and an article inserted in the second number of the Edinburgh Pnilosophical Journal, as the basis of our historical recapitulation of recorded cases, we by no means wish it to be under stood, that we vouch for the truth of them all indiscri minately; for some of them rest on very slender or doubtful evidence; and a few we have purposely dis carded, because we have been apprised, on unquestion able authority, that they were apocryphal. We may, however, pretty fairly presume, that the number of genuine occurrences of the phenomenon is, at least, not inferior to that which we purpose to quote; for it is reasonable to infer, that while the learned continued incredulous, even trite reports might be rejected as fabulous; and several foreign collections of fossils con tain specimens of reputed atmospheric origin, and ex hibiting the features of meteoric physiognomy. It is, likewise, worthy of remark, that many fragments of heavenly descent may, at this moment, lie scattered on the earth, because, if abandoned but for a short time to the variations of humidity and temperature, to which the surface of our planet is constantly exposed, their metallic portions would be as speedily oxidized and degraded as a bit of polished steel, and thus render them to the eye of casual observation undistinguishable from morsels of those ferruginous stones which may be met with in almost every region of the globe. Be sides, many relations of the phenomenon may have sunk into oblivion from the waste of time, or the stroke of calamity ; and, on a fair computation of chances, me teors may have frequently exploded over desert tracts of land, or the pathless expanse of the waters.
From the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, we are not aware that any passage can be cited in di rect proof of the descent of stones from the atmosphere. The ingenious but fanciful Mr. Edward King, indeed, in his " Remarks concerning stones said to nave fallen from the clouds, both in these days and in ancient times," points to two passages as announcing such an event. The first occurs in the 13th verse of the 18th Psalm—The Lord also thundered out of heaven, and the _Highest gave his thunder : hail-stones and COALS OF FIRE. This last expression has, no doubt, been con jectured to denote real hard bodies in a state of igni tion: and the term avOeuxe.;, employed by the cautious Seventy, rather favours such an interpretation. The same expression, however, occurs in the verse imme diately preceding, without admitting of this significa tion; and the phrase seems to be only a figurative mode of painting lightning; for, even in the sedate latitudes of the north, and in plain colloquial discourse, we currently talk of balls of fire, and thunderbolts, without any reference to solid matter. The other pas sage adduced by Mr. King, is the 1tth verse of the loth chapter of Joshua. ?Ind it came to pass, as they fed from before Israel, and were in the going down to Beth-horon, that the Lord cast down GREAT sToxEsfrom. heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with had-stones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. Here the ex pression great stones is, perhaps, less ambiguous than coals of fire ; yet the context hardly permits its to doubt, that these great stones were really hail-stones, or rather, perhaps, lumps of ice, formed in the atmos sphere, such as occasionally fall in summer, and such as alarmed the whole of Paris and its neighbourhood, in July, 1788 At all events, the slaughter of the C:naanites is represented as resulting from the special interposition of divine power ; and the consideration of miracles is irrelevant to our present purpose. In the
New Testament, however, we find a passage, which may, perhaps, be construed as alluding, at least inci dentally, to the traditionary fall of a meteorite ; for, in the -dots of the Apostles, the chief magistrate of Ephe sus is represented as thus addressing the people : Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image wallet' FELL DOWN FROM JUPITER ? or, more literally, OF THAT WHICH FELL DOWN FROM JUPITER. According to some learned commentators, this image was merely a conical or pyramidal stone, which fell from the clouds; and it appears that various other images of thc heathen dei ties were nothing else. Thus, Herodian expressly de clares, that the Phenicians had no statue of the sun, polished by the hand, but only a certain large stone, circular below, and terminated acutely above, in the figure of a cone, a black colour, and that they report it to have fallen from the heavens. Nor is it at all sur prising that rude and superstitious tribes should attach ideas of veneration and mystery to a solid and ignited body, precipitated from the sky. But even the com plete silence of the sacred volume with respect to any physical appearance, does not imply its non•existence during the periods to which that volume refers ; for scientific statements form no essential part of the plan of revealed religion; and stony bodies may have occa sionally descended from the sky, in the peopled or un peopled regions of the globe, as comets and eclipses may have attracted the attention of mortals, though not indicated by the inspired penman.
If from sacred we turn to the early periods of pro fane history, we shall find the annals of public events very copiously interspersed with notices of prodigies and strange appearances, many of which we may safely ascribe to the ascendancy %Aid) superstition iong main tained over the human mind, so that it becomes ex tremely difficult, after the lapse of many ages, and in the collation of records which savour of the marvellous, to separate truth from fiction. Thus, in regard to the topic before us, we are fully authorised to discard from our ex-terrestrial catalogue certain modifications of sul phuret of iron, belemnites, orthoceratites, Sec. which the observations or intelligent naturalits have proved to be of mineral or animal formation, as also the heads of ar rows and sharpened flints, which have been fashioned by the hand of man, though the vulgar may, in the earlier stages of society, have attributed to them a celestial origin, and ranked them among thunder stones : but, when substances differing from these, and coinciding in any one character or circumstance with modern speci mens of meteorites, are affirmed by the ancients to have fallen from the cl turfs, the remoteness of the epochs, and the lameness of the documents, may considerably affect our appreciation of the reputed evidence. Hence, when we touch much more lightly on the ancient than on sonic of the more recent testimonies, we are far from maintaining the certainty even of the particular instances selected; but, as the indiscriminate scepticism of the learned is scarcely less reprehensible than the blind credulity of the barbarian, we reckon it fair to admit their probability, and the weight which the mention of them may he considered as adding to that of subsequent and more circumstantial narratives.