The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-10-18

stretch OF the horizon.
Scores Of the people were on the street
by that time and feeling sure that some
thing unusual had happened, some of the
curate's neighbors mounted their horses
and galloped on in the direction Of Alca-
ron, where perfect avalanche OF me-
teoric stones were found to have descend
ed on tract Of meadow land with scat
tered shade trees, whose branches still
showed marks Of the celestial cannonade.
An analysis Of the collected specimens
showed that they consisted OF iron and
hornblende with traces OF obsidian and
magnesia. Some Of the larger stones had
a peculiar glossy surface, not unlike
dark varnish or potter's glaze, as II the
metallic substance had been fused by an
intense. but transient heat.
The causes of high temperature. which
generally effects the explosion Of aeroiites
has never been clearly explained. The
enormous velocity of a falling meteor
might generate heat by the resistance Of
the earth's atmosphere; but IL has been
demonstrated that some fire balls explo-
ded at a hight Of 300 miles. where the air
is certainly too rarited to offer any APP
preciable resistance to a compact mass or
iron ore. on the other hand, the theory
of such projectiles from the realms OF
space being heated in the crater OF
moon volcano has been abandoned as in
compatible with the evidence of telesco-
pic researches; but their extra-terrestrtai
origin has been established beyond the
shadow Of a doubt. The composition or
the Aleneon specimens has been found to
correspond in all details with that OF the
six hundred ton boulder found at
Sharoslaw, in Southern Siberia,
and will probably prove TO agree
with the samples of Capt. Brentano, who
claims that the shower of Jebel lshak Is
the largest on record since the time when
city in Mesopotamia was obliterated by
an avalanche from the clouds
The destructive force of large meteors
was illustrated by the case that occurred
in 1869 near the village of Zacopata, in the
Mexican state of Jalisco, where fam
lily of peasants, at work in their bean
patch. were frightened nearly to Geath by
an enormous aerolite that expioded d.
rectly over their heads after descending
from space with a noise resembling the
piping of a storm blast. The explosion
was heard al Navarck, twenty miles due
west, and investigation proved that one
of the larger pieces had smashed its way
through an eighteen-inch ledge of lime
stone rock, fitting up the edges in CIR
Gle, and buried itself in the stony SOIL
about three feet beneath the base of the
ledge. No building in the world could
have resisted a cannon ball of that
weight "a ton and halo, and the peasant
who brought the first news of the por-
tent affirmed that 1.-The devil must have
made an attempt to knock him in the
head" and ascribed his preservation to
a metallic cross which one of his daugh-
ters luckily wore as a necklace-a charm.
Field Marshal Benedek the Zeug Meis-
ter or chief of the Australian artillery
and first-class authority on those topics,
estimated the number of men slain by
cannon balls as only about one-fourteenth
of those killed by rife bullets, and the vic
Tins of aerolites may not exceed one-four-
teenth thousandth part of the multitudes
struck dead by lightning or inundated by
hallstorms. snow tornadoes and cloud
bursts. Eight years ago thirty inches of
snow fell in the mountains of Northern
Georgia in a single night, breaking down
house roofs and suffOcating hundreds of
sheep and dogs, but that avalanche from
the clouds was a mere trifie compared
with the billiards. which the natives Of
the northern plains consider a yearly oc-
curTence. Between Czernopol and Irkutslk
ffty-eight Siberian exiles persisted last
year in a snow cyclone that obliged their
guard to abandon them to their fate. as
whole chain-gangs of the shackled
wretches had fallen down together and
could not be brought to face the terrific
gale any longer,
Hailstorms are rare in that lat
itude, but further south have
more than once assumed the pro-
portions of an ice cannonade,
splintering trees and Staying whole herds
of cattle, together with their owners and
herders, as three years ago near Islodi, in
Southern Bulgaria where the scene of de-
struction resembled the havoc of a battle
field, and in spite of the warm summer
weather, the compacted masses of ice in
| the wayside glens did not melt before the
| evening of the third day.