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storum generationes hoc se modo habent. Compertum vobis est quo pacto fulmen nascatur, quod lapis est, et manifeste quidem Jam si tonitrus principia adsint, et colligantur in fulmen, et possibile et natu rale est, ut per generationem ejusmodi fulmina decem, viginti, plura, pauciorave producantur. Quot enim fragores tot la. pides. Hujusmodi autem generationum multæ si in generationem unam coëant, ex omnibus lapis fit unicus, qui fulgur est. Hinc sequitur magnitudo aut multitudo lapidis, ac ipsius forma naturaque prout cognoscitur. Si ergo talis generatio est, in tempestatem graviorem desinere non potest. Generatio enim ea nimis celeriter fit, et excidit er aere quamprimum coagu lata fuerit. Et sicut aqua initiò per se mollis est, congelata autem fit dura: sic ista quoque materia initio est res aëria, postea, ut aqua incipit coagulari, Indurata autem non amplius est aërea, sed fit terrea. Ipsam ergo aer amplius retinere non potest, sed elabi sinit.

Ex hoc liquet, fieri posse ut hujusmo

di materiæ conveniant, sine omni tempestate, et sese citra omnem cursum in cœlo congregent, ejusque omnino sint naturæ, ut conveniant, et se invicem indurent. Sic plumbum liquefactum, quam primum aquæ infunditur, momento induruit. Hujusmodi materiæ sunt etiam in firmamento ignis. Quæ donec contrarium non habent, aerex manent. Ubi autem extraneum contrarium incidit, aliæ fiunt, et aereæ esse desinunt. Ita et de pluviâ notum est, donec nubes est, terram non attingit, sed libratur in sublimitate. Quamprimum autem con junctionem peregrinam assumit et dis solvitur, fit corporea et terrestris. Inde ergo aqua fit, et pluvia, in sublimitate amplius contineri non valens, sed decidens. Tales in cœlo sunt etiam materiæ ex quibus lapides fiunt ob naturam tonitrualem, hoc est, fulmineam. Sic et alia plura si à contrariis impetantur, lapides fiunt. T. 2, P. 319.

The popular and almost universal be. lief in thunderbolts cannot be without

some foundation. Great quantities of a kind of transparent ore, pointed at one end, are found in Angola, which the inhabitants call tarc, and believe to be engendered in the air, and that it falls from thence in thundering weather*. The peasants in Norway say, that the thunder darts down the stones which they call thunderbolts, aiming them at the Troll, a kind of witches, or infernal spirits of the night, who otherwise would destroy the whole world.

One of the most remarkable passages which I have met with upon this subject is in Lassels's Italian Voyage. He says that in the cabinet of the Canonigo Setalis at Milan, there was a piece of a thunderbolt, which the Canon said he himsel cut out of the thigh of a man that had been stricken with it. The fact may not be true, but I would not pronounce it impossible.

Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. 6, fol. edit. p. 491.
+ Pontoppidan.
Part. 1, p. 56.

Is it probable that the showers of dust which are so fiequently mentioned, and always attributed to the eruption of some volcano, are sometimes produced in the same manner as the sky-stones? The black dust which fell in Zetland and Orkney in 1755 was supposed to have come from Hecla; but it came with a. south-west wind, and, as was remarked at the time, supposing that a north wind happening just before had carried this dust to the southward, and the southwest wind immediately following had brought it back to the northward, in that case would not the black dust have been observed in Zetland when on its way to the south*? One of the missionaries from the Society for propagating the Gospel relates a fact which seems strongly to support what I have conjectured. Pursuing our voyage among the Canary islands, it was observed one

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* Edmonston's View of the Zetland Islands, vol. 2, P. 185

morning that the ship's rigging had ga thered a red sand, which it posed the sailors to account for, not being within view of any land. None of them had ever seen the like before, and it could only be conjectured that the wind must have brought it off from the Pike of Teneriffe*."

Spallanzani†, examining some stones which fell in an ignited shower from Vesuvius, found that they were particles of lava, which had become solid in the air, and taken a globose form.

According to some of the Mahommedan doctors, the storm which consumed Sodom and Gomorrah was a hailstorm of red hot stones, heated in the furnaces of Hell.

224. West's Immortality of Nelson. This frontispiece to the huge life of

* Two Missionary Vovages to New Jersey, and to the Coast of Guiney, by Thomas Thompson, Vicar of Reculvei in Kent. 1758,

+ Travels in the Two Sicilies. Ch. 1.

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