might naturally be supposed. The largest of all those that fell,
weighs seventeen pounds and a half. The smallest which I have seen,
weighs about two _gros_, (a thousandth part of the last.) The number
of all those which fell, is certainly above two or three thousand."

Meteoric stones have been known to commit great injury in their fall. In
July, 1790, a very bright fire-ball, luminous as the sun, of the size of
an ordinary balloon, appeared near Bourdeaux, which, after filling the
inhabitants with alarm, burst, and disappeared. A few days after, some
peasants brought stones into the town, which they said had fallen from
the meteor; but, the philosophers to whom they offered them laughed at
their statements. One of these stones, fifteen inches in diameter, broke
through the roof of a cottage, and killed a herdsman and a bullock. In
1810, a great stone fell at Shahabad, in India. It burnt a village, and
killed several people.

The fall of meteoric stones is more frequent than would be supposed.
Chaldni has compiled a Catalogue of all recorded instances from the
earliest times. Of these, twenty-seven are previous to the Christian
era; thirty-five from the beginning of the first to the end of the
fourteenth century; eighty-nine from the beginning of the fifteenth to
the beginning of the present century; from which time, since the
attention of scientific men has been directed to the subject, above sixty
cases have been recorded. These are, doubtless, but a small proportion
of the whole amount of meteoric showers which have fallen, when the small
extent of surface occupied by those capable of recording the event is
compared with the wide expanse of the ocean, the vast uninhabited
deserts, mountains, and forests, and the countries occupied by savage
nations.

Meteoric stones have generally a broken, irregular surface, coated with a
thin black crust, like varnish. When broken, they appear to have been
made up of a number of small spherical bodies of a grey colour, imbedded
in a gritty substance, and often interspersed with yellow spots. A
considerable proportion of iron is found in all of them, partly in a
malleable state, partly in that of an oxide, and always in combination
with a rather scarce metal called nickel; {181} the earths silica, and
magnesia, and sulphur, form the other chief ingredients; but, the earths
alumina and lime, the metals manganese, chrome, and cobalt, together with
carbo