This occurrence in the nineteenth century may well be typical of what must have happened in past times. A case from the fifteenth century, narrated by Professor Newton, is very interesting, since the treatises on precious stones of that period and somewhat later contain many notices of supposed meteorites. We are told that, on November 16, 1492, a stone weighing 300 pounds fell at Ensisheim, in Alsace. Emperor Maximilian, who was then in Basel, caused the stone to be brought to the neighboring castle and summoned a state council to determine the character of the divine message associated with its fall. The council decided that the event signified some important occurrence in the approaching conflict between the French and the Turks, and the stone, with an appropriate inscription, was suspended in the church, the strictest injunctions being given that it should not be removed. Conrad Gesner, in his treatise, “De figuris lapidum,”[133] states that a fragment of this stone was given to him by a friend and that it resembled ordinary sandstone. We are told that nineteen years later a shower of stones fell near Crema, east of Milan; these stones fell in French territory and at that time the Pope was engaged in hostilities with the French. During the following year, the French, who had long threatened the States of the Church from their possessions in Lombardy, were forced to withdraw from Italy. In the celebrated painting by Raphael, known as the Madonna di Foligno, one of the greatest treasures of the Vatican, this Crema fire-ball is depicted. Naturally the recitals from ancient times are not as easily controlled as the more modern accounts and it is always possible that stones other than meteorites were given a celestial origin by superstitious zeal. The black stone of the Kaabah, which is probably noted by early Greek writers and was an object of adoration for the Arabian tribes before the time of Mohammed, was believed to have dropped from heaven together with Adam, and in many Greek legends images were said to have fallen from heaven. Of course in the case of real statues this is simply a vague superstition, but the stone venerated in Phrygia as an image of Cybele may possibly have been a genuine meteorite. The following facts in relation to this stone are presented by Professor Newton: