sixty pounds,
and the confused noise was, besides, much louder than here. Then a child
saw it strike on a field in the upper jurisdiction, toward the Rhine and
Inn, near the district of Giscano, which was sown with wheat, and it did
it no harm, except that it made a hole there: and then they conveyed it
from that spot; and many pieces were broken from it; which the landvogt
forbade. They, therefore, caused it to be placed in the church, with the
intention of suspending it as a miracle: and there came here many people
to see this stone. So there were remarkable conversations about this
stone: but the learned said that they knew not what it was; for it was
beyond the ordinary course of nature that such a large stone should
smite the earth from the height of the air; but that it was really a
miracle of God; for, before that time, never any thing was heard like
it, nor seen, nor described. When they found that stone, it had entered
into the earth to the depth of a man's stature, which every body
explained to be the will of God that it should be found; and the noise
of it was heard at Lucerne, at Vitting, and in many other places, so
loud that it was believed that houses had been overturned: and as the
King Maximilian was here the Monday after St. Catharine's day of the
same year, his royal excellency ordered the stone which had fallen to be
brought to the castle, and, after having conversed a long time about it
with the noblemen, he said that the people of Ensisheim should take it,
and order it to be hung up in the church, and not to allow any body to
take any thing from it. His excellency, however, took two pieces of it;
of which he kept one, and sent the other to the Duke Sigismund of
Austria: and they spoke a great deal about this stone, which they
suspended in the choir, where it still is; and a great many people came
to see it." Contemporary writers confirm the substance of this
narration, and the evidence of the fact exists; the aerolite is
precisely identical in its chemical composition with that of other
meteoric stones. It remained for three centuries suspended in the
church, was carried off to Colmar during the French revolution; but has
since been restored to its former site, and Ensisheim rejoices in the
possession of the relic. A piece broken from it is in the Museum of the
_Jardin des Plantes_ at Paris.

The celebrated Gassendi was an eye-witness of a similar event. In the
year 1627, on the 27th of November,