The greatest number of the stones which have fallen from the air have been preceded by the appearance of luminous bodies or meteors. These meteors have burst with an explosion, and then the shower of stones has fallen to the earth. Sometimes the stones have continued luminous until they sunk into the earth, but most commonly their luminousness disappeared at the time of the explosion. Their motion through the air is surprisingly rapid, in a direction nearly horizontal; but they seem to approach the earth before they explode. In their flight they have frequently been heard to yield a loud whizzing sound. They are hot when they first reach the earth; and exhibit, on their surface, visible marks of fusion.
A general tradition has prevailed in almost all ages, and amongst all people, of the fall of solid bodies from the atmosphere, under various denominations, but, with us, more particularly, under that of thunderbolts. In barbarous and uncivilized countries, these have usually been ascribed to the miraculous judgment of the deity; and they may be considered as the true origin of the worship of stones. The image of Diana, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, as believed by the Ephesians to have fallen down from Jupiter, and the Palladium or sacred statue of Minerva, which also is said to have fallen from Heaven, and to have been preserved in Troy, as a treasure, on the safety of which that of the city depended, had each, no doubt, this origin. The Psalmist evidently alludes to the falling of meteoric stones, when, speaking of the Almighty, he says, “He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him with dark water, and thick clouds to cover him. At the brightness of his presence his clouds removed; hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered out of Heaven, and the Highest gave his thunder; hailstones and coals of fire.”
Among numerous other instances of these stones, it is recorded that, on the seventh of November, 1492, betwixt eleven and twelve o’clock at noon, a dreadful clap of thunder was heard at Ensisheim, a considerable town in Alsace, and that a huge stone was seen to fall on a field lately sown with wheat. On several of the neighbours going to the place, the hole it had formed was found to be about three feet in depth, and the stone when dug out, weighed two hundred and sixty pounds. It was preserved in the cathedral of Ensisheim until the beginning of the French Revolution, when it was conveyed to the public library at Colmar. There are in the British Museum two small pieces of this stone, and fragments of several other meteoric stones which have fallen in different parts of the world.
Two stones fell near Verona in Italy, in the year 1672, one of which weighed three hundred, and the other two hundred pounds.
Mr. Sowerby, the publisher of English Botany, and of several other highly estimable works, possessed a meteoric stone which fell near Wold Newton in Yorkshire, in the afternoon of the thirteenth of December, 1795, and weighed fifty-six pounds. Whilst this stone was in motion through the air, several persons perceived a body passing along the clouds, although they were unable to ascertain what it was. It passed over several different villages, and was also accurately and distinctly heard. The day was foggy; and, though there was some thunder and lightning at a distance, it was not until the stone fell that an explosion took place which alarmed all the adjacent country; and created, distinctly, a sensation that something very extraordinary had happened. A shepherd belonging to Captain Topham was within a hundred and fifty yards of the place where it fell; George Sawden, a carpenter, within sixty yards; and John Shepley, one of Captain Topham’s farming servants, was so near that he was forcibly struck by some of the mud and earth that were raised by the stone dashing into the ground. In its fall the stone excavated a place nineteen inches in depth (seven inches of which were in a solid rock of chalk), and somewhat more than three feet in diameter, fixing itself so firmly that some labour was required to dig it out.
Another stone of considerable size fell in Scotland on the fifth of April, 1704. A misty commotion was observed in the atmosphere, and, nearly at the time of the stone falling, a report was heard as loud as if three or four cannon had been fired at a little distance. The report was succeeded by a violent rushing or whizzing noise; and, almost immediately afterwards, the stone fell into a drain, in the presence of two men and two boys, splashing the water to a distance of twenty feet around. The stone, when dug out, was found to have sunk about eighteen inches into the earth.
On the fifth of November, 1814, about half past four o’clock in the afternoon, a dreadful peal of thunder was heard in the Doab in Persia, and was immediately succeeded by a shower of large stones, many of them from twenty-six to thirty pounds weight each. Several inhabitants of the adjacent country were present at the time; and not fewer than nineteen of the stones were collected.
Professor Pallas, many years ago, discovered lying on the surface of a hill in Siberia, a mass of native iron, which weighed 1680 pounds. It was considered by the natives as a holy relic, and was believed by them to have fallen from heaven. M. de Bougainville, the French circumnavigator, discovered, on the banks of the river La Plata, in South America, an enormous mass of native iron, which he calculated to have weighed about 100,000 pounds. And a mass of native iron, appearing in every respect to have been of meteoric origin, was, some years ago, discovered in the district of St. Jago del Estro, in South America. It was in the middle of a great plain, and had no rock nor mountain near it, and was calculated to have weighed about thirty tons.
The origin of meteoric stones is involved in great obscurity. Some writers have imagined that they might be projected from distant volcanoes; others, that they may have been detached from rocks, and had their substance considerably changed by a concurrence of natural causes; others, that they may have been generated in the air by a combination of mineral substances; and others, that they may have been projected from the moon. The latter was the opinion of La Place the astronomer, who says that a mass, if thrown by a volcano from the moon, with a velocity of about a mile and half per second, it will thence be projected beyond the sphere of the moon’s attraction, and into the confines of that of the earth; the consequence of which will be, that the mass must presently fall to the earth, and become a part of it.
235. LOADSTONE, or MAGNETIC IRONSTONE, is a compact blackish kind of iron ore, which is possessed of the power of attracting iron, as well as every substance which contains ferruginous particles. It is betwixt four and five times as heavy as water.