y was
perfectly serene, a violent detonation was heard in the department of
the Lot and Garonne. This was followed by three or four others, and
finally by a rolling noise, at first resembling a discharge of musketry,
afterward the rumbling of carriages, and lastly that of a large building
falling down. Stones were immediately after precipitated to the ground,
some of which weighed eighteen pounds, and sunk into a compact soil, to
the depth of eight or nine inches; and one of them rebounded three or
four feet from the ground."

"A great shower of stones fell at Barbatan, near Roquefort, in the
vicinity of Bordeaux, on July 24, 1790. A mass fifteen inches in
diameter penetrated a hut and killed a herdsman and bullock. Some of the
stones weighed twenty-five pounds, and others thirty pounds."

"In July, 1810, a large ball of fire fell from the clouds, at Shahabad,
which burned five villages, destroyed the crops, and killed several men
and women."[292]

Astronomers are perfectly agreed as to the character of these masses,
and the source whence they come. "It appears from recent astronomical
observations that the sun numbers among his attendants not only planets,
asteroids, and comets, but also immense multitudes of meteoric stones,
and shooting stars."[293] AErolites are, then, really stars. They are
composed of materials similar to those of our earth; the only other star
whose materials we can compare with them. They have a proper motion
around the sun, in orbits distinct from that of the earth. They are
capable of emitting the most brilliant light, in favorable
circumstances. Some of them are as large as the asteroids. One, of
600,000 tons weight, passed within twenty-five miles of the earth, at
the rate of twenty miles a second. A fragment of it reached the
earth.[294] "That aerolites were called _stars_ by the ancients is
indisputable. Indeed, Anaxagoras considered the stars to be only stony
masses, torn from the earth by the violence of rotation. Democritus
tells us, that invisible dark masses of stone move with the visible
stars, and remain on that account unknown, but sometimes fall upon the
earth, and are extinguished, as happened with the stony star which fell
near Aegos Potamos."[295]

When Deborah, therefore, describes the _stars in their courses_ as
fighting against Sisera, it is an utterly unfounded assumption to
suppose that she has any allusion to the baseless fancies of an
astrology everywhere condemned