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 carbon, soda, and water, have also been found in small quantities, but not in the same specimens. No substance with which chemists were previously unacquainted, has ever been found in them; but no combination, similar to that in meteoric stones, has ever been met with in geological formations, or among the products of any volcano. They are sometimes very friable, sometimes very hard; and some that are friable when they first fall, become hard afterwards. When taken up soon after their fall they are extremely hot. They vary in weight from two drams to several hundred pounds. Meteoric stones have fallen in all climates, in every part of the earth, at all seasons, in the night and in the day.