Among the more remarkable instances to be met with in ancient authors, the following may be mentioned. Livy states that, in the reign of Tullus Hostilius (about 654 ste.), a shower of stones fell on the Alban Mount, not far distant from Rome. Plutarch, in the 'Life of Lysander,' describes a stone that fell at Xgos Potami, in the Hellespont, near the modern Gallipoli, about 405 s.c., which is also mentioned by the elder Pliny (ii), who says that it was to be seen in his time, that is, five hundred years afterwards, and that it was as large as a waggon, of a burnt• colour, and its fall was accom panied by a meteor. It is also recorded in the Parian Chronicle.' The mother of the gods was worshipped at Pessinus, in Galatia, under the form of a stone, which was said to have fallen from heaven ; and that stone, in consequence of a treaty with Attains, king of Pergamus, was solemnly brought to Rome by Publius Scipio Nasica, about 204 years D.C., and ,,,placed in the temple of Cybele. The sun was worshipped at Emesa, in Syria, under the form of a large, conical, black stone, which, as the people about the temple reported, fell upon the earth. It was afterwards brought with great pomp to Rome by Elagabalus, who had been high-priest of the temple; and the descrip tion of it, given by Herodian (v.), accords with the appearance of. a meteoric stone. In China records exist of occurrences of this kind during a period of 2400 years. These were translated by M. l'riot ; and to give an instance of the nature of these records we may state that between the years A.D. 960 to 1270 no less than 1479 meteors are registered. Of course these were not all aerolites. The great stone at Cholula in America was asserted by the Mexicans to have fallen from heaven.
One of the cases of more modern date, most circumstantially described, is that of the stone which fell at Ensisheim, in Alsace, in 1492. The emperor Maximilian being there at the time, ordered an account of the event to be drawn up. It weighed 270 pounds ; and was afterwards suspended by a chain in the church at Ensisheim for three centuries. During the French Revolution, it was carried off to Colmar, and many pieces were broken from it. One of these is in the museum at the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris ; it is identical in composition with other meteoric stones, and contains native 'or malleable iron. \That remained of the precious relic has since been restored to the good people of Ensisheim, and it -now stands near the great altar in their church.
Besides aerolites properly so called, masses of malleable iron, often of vast Size, have been found in situations, which, together with their composition, leave no doubt as to their being of meteoric origin. An immense mass, seen by Pallas in Siberia, which forms the subject of Chladni's tract in 1794 above alluded to, was found quite insulated, at a great elevation on a mountain of slate near the river Yenesei, removed from everything that could excite suspicion of its being a production of art, and totally different from any ore of iron seen either before or since that time The tradition was, that it had fallen from heaven, and, as such, was held in veneration by the Tartars ; but it was removed in 1749 to the neighbouring town of Krasnojarsk by the inspector of the iron mines there. The mass, which weighed
about 1400 lbs., was of an irregular form, not solid, but cellular like a sponge, the cella containing small granular bodies of a glassy nature, afterwards found to be the simple mineral olivine, so common in basalt. The iron was tough and malleable, and, according to the analysis of Howard, yielded 17 per cent of nickel; but Klaproth and John found a much smaller proportion of nickel, and Laugicr found, by another analysis, silica, magnesia, sulphur, and chrome. The disagreement of such skilful operators shows that the mass was not uniform in its composition. Another vast mass of meteoric iron was found in South America, in the jurisdiction of Santiago del Estero, about 500 miles north-west from Buenos Ayres, and is described in a memoir in the Spanish language, printed in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1788, by Don Rubin de Celis, who was sent by the governor of the province to examine it. It lay in a vast plain of above 100 leagues in extent, half sunk in the ground, and the size was such as, estimating it by the specific gravity of iron, would give a weight of more than 13 tons. According to the analysis of Proust and of Howard, it contains 90 per cent. of iron, and 10 of nickel. Specimens of this mass, which were sent to the Royal Society by Don Rubin de Celis, are in the collection of the British Museum. A mass of meteoric iron at the Cape of Good Hope, mentioned by Barrow in his 'Travels in Africa,' as an artificial production, is described by Van Marum in the 'Haarlem Transactions,' a large portion of it having been sent to the public museum there by the governor of the colony. The mass, when found, was equal to about 177 lbs., but much had been carried away. The specific gravity is 7'604. Tennant found it to contain per cent. of nickel, and a trace of carbon, and Stromeyer detected cobalt in it, which last metal has also been found by Dr. Turner in some meteoric iron from Buenos Ayres. Another mass was found in Brazil, about 50 leagues from Bahia, the weight of which was estimated at 14,000 lbs.; a fragment of this, analysed by Dr. Wollaston, yielded 4 per cent. of nickel. Many other instances of similar masses of iron might be mentioned, which are evidently of meteoric origin ; but the only instance on record of iron having been actually seen to fall from the atmosphere, is that which took place at Agram, in Croatia, in 1751. On the 26th of May, about six o'clock in the evening, the sky being quite clear, there was seen a ball of fire, which shot along with a hollow noise from west to east, and after a loud explosion, accompanied by a great smoke, two masses of iron fell from it, in the form of chains welded together.