Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/383

Rh many eye-witnesses it seems impossible to withstand their evidence."

As the wind was from the north when the stones fell at Siena, while Vesuvius was to the south, it was suggested that the cloud from which they came had been blown all the way from Vesuvius past Siena and then back again, before it condensed.

The next meteorite seen to fall was in England itself. On December 13, 1795, a stone weighing fifty-six pounds fell at Wold Cottage, in Yorkshire, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, and several persons saw it fall. It fell on a perfectly clear day, and penetrated twelve inches of soil and six inches of chalk rock. In the neighboring villages sounds were heard which were taken for the firing of guns at sea, and in two villages there was such a distinct sound of something whizzing through the air toward the house of a Mr. Topham that several people ran there to see what had happened. When the stone was dug up it was warm and smoked. It was exhibited in London, and handbills were distributed giving an account of its descent. Such advertising, however, did not tend to make people believe in the celestial origin of the stone; and, as there were no volcanoes in England, it was thought that it might have been condensed from a cloud of ashes blown from Mount Hecla in Iceland. We do not, however, have to go back one hundred years to find wild hypotheses as to the probable origin of meteorites. Even now very little is known, and the field for speculation is nearly as unlimited as it was then, though the theories of a few centuries ago are simpler and more amusing than the recent ones. In the chronicles of the Benedictine monks a theory of the origin of meteorites is given briefly thus:

"In the year 921, in the time of Lord John X, pope, in the seventh year of his pontificate, signs were seen; for, near the city of Rome, many stones were seen to fall from the sky—such dreadful and terrible ones in the city of Narnia that people had to believe that they were brought straight from hell. The very biggest of the stones, falling into the river Narnius, can be seen to this day, projecting a cubit above the surface of the water."

A Persian philosopher, Syed Abdulla, in 1814, describing a fall of stones near Bombay, says: "The causes of this may be, that in the course of working (or of changes on) the ground, air being extricated, may have entered into combination, and come near elemental fire, and from this fire have received a portion of heat; that then it may have united with brimstone and terrene salt, as, for instance, saltpeter; when the mixture, from some cause, being ignited, the fire bestows its own property on the mass, and the stones which may have been above it are blown into the air—God knows the truth."