the
demonstration, a great shower of stones took place in the following year
at L'Aigle, in Normandy. The French Academy deputed the physicist Biot
to visit the locality and make a detailed examination of the
circumstances attending this memorable shower. His enquiry removed every
trace of doubt, and the meteoric stones have accordingly been
transferred from the dominions of geology to those of astronomy. It may
be noted that the recognition of the celestial origin of meteorites
happens to be simultaneous with the discovery of the first of the minor
planets. In each case our knowledge of the solar system has been
extended by the addition of numerous minute bodies, which,
notwithstanding their insignificant dimensions, are pregnant with
information.

When the possibility of stone-falls has been admitted, we can turn to
the ancient records, and assign to them the credit they merit, which
was withheld for so many centuries. Perhaps the earliest of all these
stone-falls which can be said to have much pretension to historical
accuracy is that of the shower which Livy describes as having fallen,
about the year 654 B.C., on the Alban Mount, near Rome. Among the more
modern instances, we may mention one which was authenticated in a very
emphatic manner. It occurred in the year 1492 at Ensisheim, in Alsace.
The Emperor Maximilian ordered a minute narrative of the circumstances
to be drawn up and deposited with the stone in the church. The stone was
suspended in the church for three centuries, until in the French
Revolution it was carried off to Colmar, and pieces were broken from it,
one of which is now in our national collection. Fortunately, this
interesting object has been restored to its ancient position in the
church at Ensisheim, where it remains an attraction to sight-seers at
this day. The account is as follows:--"In the year of the Lord 1492, on
the Wednesday before St. Martin's Day, November 7th, a singular miracle
occurred, for between eleven o'clock and noon there was a loud clap of
thunder and a prolonged confused noise, which was heard at a great
distance, and a stone fell from the air in the jurisdiction of Ensisheim
which weighed 260 pounds, and the confused noise was at other places
much louder than here. Then a boy saw it strike on ploughed ground in
the upper field towards the Rhine and the Ill, near the district of
Gisgang, which was sown with wheat, and it did no harm, except that it
made a hole there; and