afterwards, "As these globes of fire spread,
wherever they pass, an odour like that of
burning sulphur, I can scarcely doubt that
they  are clouds principally composed of
brimstone and other combustibles issuing
from volcanos which have opened fresh
mouths amongst the mountains, and have
discharged large quantities of sulphurous
vapours before they have caught fire."

The opinion of the learned in the second
half of the eighteenth century respecting
stones fallen from the sky, may be gathered
from a report made to the Académie des
Sciences, in 1769, by the celebrated chemist
Lavoisier, in the name of a commission
appointed to give an account of a phenomenon
of the kind which had lately happened
in France. First, he expresses his scepticism.
"In spite of the notions accredited
amongst the ancients, true philosophers
have always regarded as very doubtful the
existence of these thunderstorms. And if
it was considered suspicious at a time
when philosophers had scarcely any idea
of the nature of thunder, it must appear
still more so at the present day, now that
it is known that the effects of lightning
are the same as those of electricity."

He then proceeds to relate the facts. On
the 13th of September, 1768, at about half-
past four in the afternoon, there appeared
in the direction of the Chateau de la
Chevallerie, near Lucé, a little town in the
Maine, a stormy cloud, inside which was
heard a short, sharp thunder-clap, very like
the firing of a cannon. Then, throughout
the space of two leagues and a half, without
any fire being perceptible, there was
heard a considerable noise in the air which
sounded so like the lowing of an ox that
many people were deceived by it. Finally,
several individuals who were doing
harvest work in the parish of Périgué, about
three leagues from Lucé, hearing the same
noise, looked up, and saw an opaque body
which described a curve and then fell on a
strip of grass on the high road to Mans,
near which they were working. They all ran
up to it quickly and found a sort of stone,
about the half of which was buried in the
earth; but it was so burning hot that they
could not handle it. Then they all took
fright and ran-away; but returning some
time afterwards, they saw that it had not
stirred, and found that it had cooled
sufficiently to admit of a close examination.
This stone weighed seven pounds and a
half. It was triangular in shape; that is,
it presented three rounded protuberances,
one of which, at the moment of its fall,
had entered the sod. All the part of it
which was in the ground was grey or ash-
coloured, while the rest, exposed to the air,
was extremely black.

We have here all the circumstances of a
meteor, with explosion, and the fall of a
solid body to the earth, but without any
luminous appearance, in consequence of its
happening in broad daylight. Lavoisier,
after mentioning the existence on its
surface of a very thin coating of black, swollen
matter which appeared to have been fused,
came to the conclusion that the stone had
not been exposed to a considerable degree
of heat, nor for any length of time; in
fact, it decomposed before it became red-
hot: consequently, that it did not owe its
origin to thunder, had not fallen from the
sky, nor had been formed by mineral
matters fused by lightning. The commission
gave their opinion that the stone, which
perhaps had been slightly covered with
earth or turf, had been struck with lightning,
and so laid bare; the heat had been
sufficient to melt the surface of the portion
struck, but had not lasted long enough
to penetrate the interior, which was the
reason why the stone was not decomposed.
It is clear they were determined not to
believe the evidence of the persons who
saw it fall. The uncertainty respecting
the nature and the cause of meteors is
further shown in a letter addressed, in
1784, by Charles Blagden to Sir Joseph
Banks, and published in the Transactions
of the Royal Society of London. His
conclusion is that the sole known natural
agent, to which the production of these
phenomena can be attributed, is electricity.

Such was the state of opinion respecting
meteors and stones fallen from the sky,
when Chladni (whose portrait is given as
the frontispiece to Tyndall's admirable
treatise on Sound) published, in German,
in 1794, Reflexions on the Origin of Divers
Masses of Native Iron, and notably of that
found by Pallas in Siberia. With wonderful
acuteness he maintained the thesis
that everything seemed to prove that these
masses of iron are no other than the
substance of bolides or globes of fire; for all
that was known of those meteors proved
they were formed of heavy and compact
materials which could not be projected in
the air in a solid shape by a terrestrial force,
nor be composed of diverse substances
disseminated in the atmosphere. Moreover,
the lumps found where these bolides have
fallen, bear so striking a resemblance not
only amongst themselves but to those of