edit for their
stories of showers of stones; and all were ready to joke with Butler,
at the story of the Thracian rock, which fell in the river Aegos:--

"For Anaxagoras, long agon,
Saw hills, as well as you i'th' moon,
And held the sun was but a piece
Of red hot iron as big as Greece.
Believ'd the heavens were made of stone,
Because the sun had voided one:
And, rather than he would recant
Th' opinion, suffered banishment."

A difficulty surrounds the subject, however we view it.
_Aerolites_, as they have been designated, have now been found in
almost every region and climate of the globe--from Arabia to the
farthest point of Baffin's Bay; and this very circumstance would seem
to be opposed to their aerial origin, unless we are to suppose that
they can be formed in every state, and in the opposite extremes of the
atmosphere. The Brahmin assigns them a lunar origin, and adds, "our
party were greatly amused at the disputations of a learned society in
Europe, in which they undertook to give a mathematical demonstration,
that they could not be thrown from a volcano of the earth, nor from
the moon, but were suddenly formed in the atmosphere. I should as soon
believe, that a loaf of bread could be made and baked in the
atmosphere."

The "gentleman farmer and projector," being attacked, during their
visit, with cholera morbus, and considering himself _in extremis_,
a consultation of physicians takes place, in which one portrait
will be obvious--that of Dr. Shuro, who asserts disease to be
a unit; and that it is the extreme of folly, to divide diseases into
classes, which tend but to produce confusion of ideas, and an
unscientific practice. The enthusiasm of the justly celebrated
individual--the original of this portrait, was so great, that the
slightest data were sufficient for the formation of some of his most
elaborate _hypotheses_--for _theories_ they could not properly
be called; and, accordingly, many of his beautiful and ingenious
superstructures are now prostrated, leaving, in open day, the
insufficiency of their foundation. One of the most striking
examples of this nature, was his belief that the black colour of
the negro is a disease, which depletion, properly exercised, might
be capable of remedying--a scheme not a whit more feasible, than
that of the courtiers of _La Reine Quinte_, referred to by
Rabelais, "who made blackamoors white, as fast as hops, by just
rubbing their sto