94 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
grain
crops, and killing or maiming many persons. So terrifying was the
sight that the Jesuits who were watching the result of the affair
half-believed that the Last Day had come. When the panic had finally
subsided, the people fell upon the unlucky Taoist priests and beat them
soundly.43
In
the "Annals of the Ottoman Empire," by Subhi Mohammed Effendi, there is
an account of the fall of a meteor at Hasergrad, on the banks of the
Danube, on the fourth of Saban, A. H. 1153 (October 25, 1740). The
weather was fine, not a cloud was to be seen in the sky, and not a
breath of air was stirrmg. Suddenly there arose a whirlwind, the air
became obscured with clouds of dust, rain fell in torrents, and it
became dark as night. While all who were out of doors were hastening to
seek shelter from the storm, three terrific peals of thunder .were
heard, as loud as the sound of many cannon. After the storm had passed
several strange masses partly of stone and partly of iron were
discovered in a nearby field. The Vizier bore two of these as great
rarities to the Sultan in Constantinople.44
The
influence exerted by popular beliefs, even upon the learned, is well
illustrated by the opinion given by some of the leading French
physicists of the eighteenth century as to the character of meteorites.
When a meteoric stone fell at Luce, Dept. Marne, France, September
13,1768, three French scientists, among them the celebrated Lavoisier,
were sent to investigate the matter. In their report to the Academy of
Sciences, they state that there must have been some error in the
accounts given of the event, for it was an assured fact that no such
things as pierres de foudre, or thunder-stones, existed. This was, of course, perfectly true, but Lavoisier and his companions did not stop to think
* Ulyssie Aldrovandi, " Museum Metallicum," pp. 528, 529. "Fundgruben des Oriente, vol. iv, p. 282; Wien, 1814.
