On September 10, 1845, at about two in the afternoon, in the course of a violent storm, a fireball came down the chimney into a room in a house in the village of Salagnac (Creuse). A child and three women who were in the room suffered no harm from it. Then it rolled into the middle of the kitchen, and passed near the feet of a young peasant who was standing in it. After which it went into an adjoining room, and disappeared without leaving any trace. The women tried to persuade the man to go in and see whether he could not stamp it out, but he had once allowed himself to be electrified in Paris, and thought it prudent to refrain. In a little stable hard by, it was found afterwards that the fireball had killed a pig. It had gone through the straw without setting fire to it. On July 12, 1872, a new form of fireball made its appearance in the Commune of Hécourt (Oise). It was of the size of an egg, and it was seen burning upon a bed. Efforts were made in vain to extinguish it, and presently the entire house, together with the neighbouring dwellings and barns, became a prey to the flames. On October 9, 1885, at 8.25 p.m., during a violent storm, a globe of fire of the size of a small apple was seen coming into a ground-floor room in a house at Constantinople through an open window, the family being at table in this room at the time. It first played round a gas-jet, then, moving towards the table, it passed between two guests, went round a lamp hanging over the centre of the table, and then precipitated itself into the street, where it exploded with an appalling crash, but without having caused any damage or hurt anybody. Not far from the scene of this phenomenon there are a number of buildings provided with lightning conductors. The fireball left no trace of smell behind it. Here is another curious narrative of a fireball. A party of five women took refuge during a storm in the entrance to a house in order to escape from the rain and the lightning. They had scarcely gained the doorway when there was a tremendous thunderclap which sent them flying backward--and two girls who had joined them--knocked senseless by lightning in the form of a fireball. One of the girls remained unconscious for a long time; all the others were more or less seriously injured, but all recovered. The strangest circumstance in connection with this affair, however, still remains to be told. [Illustration: SINGULAR CASE OF THREE FIREBALLS OBSERVED IN PARIS ON JUNE 10, 1905, BY M. H. RUDAUX. They were seen to descend in this way upon the lightning conductor above the Palais Royal electric-power station. This engraving, after a sketch made at the time by M. Rudaux, appeared in _La Science Illustrée_, for August, 1905.]