There we have a unique occurrence, recorded for us by Babinet and Arago, and of which I have given here the exact particulars. In both these cases we have to note the attraction of the hole in the chimney and the explosion of the thunderbolt on getting to the top. But it is not easy to detect the law underlying these phenomena. In one of the latest volumes of the Association Française a somewhat similar case is dealt with. "A violent storm," says the writer, M. Wander, "had descended upon the commune of Beugnon (Deux-Sèvres). I happened to be passing through a farm, in which were two children of about twelve and thirteen. These children were taking refuge from the rain under the door of a stable, in which were twenty-five oxen. In front of them extended a courtyard, sloping downwards towards a large pond, twenty or thirty yards away, beside which grew a poplar-tree. Suddenly there appeared a globe of fire, of the size of an apple, near the top of the poplar. We saw it descend, branch by branch, and then down the trunk. It moved along the courtyard _very slowly_, seeming almost to pick its way between the pools of water, and came up to the door where stood the children. One of them was bold enough to touch it with his foot. Immediately a terrible crash shook the entire farm to its foundations, the two children were thrown to the ground uninjured, but eleven of the animals in the stable were killed!" Who is to explain these anomalies? The child who touched the fireball escapes with a fright, and a few feet behind him eleven animals out of twenty-five perish on the spot! During the storm which broke out at the town of Gray, on July 7, 1886, my friend M. Vannesson, President of the Tribunal, saw a fireball of from thirty to forty centimetres in diameter, which exploded on the corner of a roof, cutting clean off the end portion of the central beam to the length of about half a yard (like a bundle of matches, but without setting it on fire), scattering the splinters over the upper story and loosening the plaster upon the walls below. It then _rebounded_ on the roofing of a little outside staircase, made a hole in it, smashing and sending flying the slates, came down upon the road, and rolling right in the midst of some passers-by--who, like the child in the farm, escaped with a fright--disappeared. My learned fellow-member of the Astronomical Society of France, Dr. Bougon, has discovered an account of one of the most remarkable fireballs ever recorded in _La Gloire des Confesseurs_, a work written by Gregory of Tours, the twentieth bishop of that town.