The influence exerted by popular beliefs, even upon the learned, is well illustrated by the opinion given by some of the leading French physicists of the eighteenth century as to the character of meteorites. When a meteoric stone fell at Luce, Dept. Marne, France, September 13, 1768, three French scientists, among them the celebrated Lavoisier, were sent to investigate the matter. In their report to the Academy of Sciences, they state that there must have been some error in the accounts given of the event, for it was an assured fact that no such things as _pierres de foudre_, or thunder-stones, existed. This was, of course, perfectly true, but Lavoisier and his companions did not stop to think that stones might fall to the earth in some other way. The result of the investigation was summed up as follows: If the existence of thunder-stones was regarded as doubtful at a time when physicists had scarcely any idea of the nature of thunder, it is even less admissible to-day, when modern physicists have discovered the effects of this natural phenomenon are the same as those of electricity. There is no record that the fulgarite, the fused sand or rock struck by the lightning, has ever been used. The opinion which seems the most probable to us, and that which is most in accord with the accepted principles of physics as well as with the facts reported by Abbé Bacheley, and our own investigation, is that the stone was originally covered with a slight crust of earth and turf, and was struck by lightning and so made visible. Chladni reports in a pamphlet published in 1794 that the mass of meteoric iron discovered by Dr. Pallas in Siberia, and known as the Pallas or Krasnojarsk iron meteorite, was regarded by the Tartars as a sacred object which had fallen from heaven.[176] As it is somewhat unlikely that this belief could be accounted for by an ancient tradition, we must seek an explanation in the conviction among primitive peoples that any mass of rock or metal of unusual appearance and differing notably from the surrounding formations must have come from the sky. In this way primitive instinct often anticipates the results of modern scientific investigation. This siderite, of irregular form and weighing some 1500 pounds, was seen by Dr. Pallas in 1772, and deposited by him in 1776; he learned that it had been found in 1749 at the summit of a mountain situated between Krasnojarsk and Abakansk, by a Cossack. Most of this famous siderite is preserved in the St. Petersburg Museum.