Most of the specimens here referred to are in Case 4 in the Pavilion at the end of the Mineral Gallery.
The fall of stones from the sky formerly discredited.
1. Till the beginning of the nineteenth century, the fall of stones from the sky was an event, the actuality of which neither men of science nor people in general could be brought to credit. Yet such falls have been recorded from the earliest times, and the records have occasionally been received as authentic by a whole nation. In most cases, however, the witnesses of such an event have been treated with the disrespect usually shown to reporters of the extraordinary, and have been laughed at for their supposed delusions: this is less to be wondered at when we remember that the witnesses of the arrival of a stone from the sky have usually been few in number, unaccustomed to exact observation, frightened both by what they saw and by what they heard, and have had a common tendency towards exaggeration and superstition.
Ancient records.
2. De Guignes in his Travels states that, according to old Chinese manuscripts, falls of stones have again and again been observed in China; the earliest mentioned is one which happened about 644 B.C.
A stone, famous through long ages,[1] fell in Phrygia and was preserved there for many generations. About 204 B.C. it was demanded from King Attalus and taken with great ceremony to Rome. It is described as "a black stone, in the figure of a cone, circular below and ending in an apex above."
In his History of Rome, Livy tells of a shower of stones on the Alban Mount, about 652 B.C., which so impressed the Senate that a nine days' solemn festival was decreed; as the shower lasted for two days, it was doubtless the result of volcanic action; other instances of the "rain of stones" in Italy, mentioned by the same author, had possibly a similar origin.
Plutarch relates the fall of a stone in Thrace about 470 B.C., during the time of Pindar, and according to Pliny, the stone was still preserved in his day, 500 years afterwards. The latter records two other falls, one in Asia Minor, the other in Macedonia.
Worship of meteoric stones.