Mrs. Somerville mentions a Meteorite which passed within twenty-five
miles of our planet, and was estimated to weigh 600,000 tons, and to
move with a velocity of twenty miles in a second. Only a small fragment
of this immense mass reached the earth. Four instances are recorded
of persons being killed by their fall. A block of stone fell at Ægos
Potamos, B.C. 465, as large as two millstones; another at Narni, in
921, projected like a rock four feet above the surface of the river,
in which it was seen to fall. The Emperor Jehangire had a sword forged
from a mass of meteoric iron, which fell in 1620 at Jahlinder in the
Punjab. Sixteen instances of the fall of stones in the British Isles
are well authenticated to have occurred since 1620, one of them in
London. It is very remarkable that no new chemical element has been
detected in any of the numerous meteorites which have been analysed.