Condamine says, the ashes of the volcano of _Sangay_, in South America, sometimes pass over the provinces of Maca, and Quito; and are even carried as far as Guayaquil.[J]
And Hooke says,[K] that on occasion of a great explosion from a volcano, in the island of Ternata, in the East Indies, there followed so great a darkness, that the inhabitants could not see each other the next day: and he justly leads us to infer what an immense quantity of ashes must, by this means, have been showered down somewhere on the sea; because at _Mindanao_, an hundred miles off, all the land was covered with ashes a foot thick.
And now, I must add; that such kind of _falling of stones from the clouds_, as has been described to have happened in Tuscany, seems to have happened also in very remote ages, of which we are not without sufficient testimony; and such as well deserves to be allowed and considered, on the present occasion; although the knowledge of the facts was, at first, in days of ignorance and gross darkness, soon perverted to the very worst purposes.
In the Acts of the holy Apostles, we read, that the chief magistrate, at _Ephesus_, begun his harangue to the people, by saying, "Ye men of Ephesus, _what man is there that knoweth not how that the City of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the_ IMAGE _which fell down from Jupiter_?" (or rather, as the original Greek has it) "_of_ THAT _which fell down from Jupiter_?" And the learned _Greaves_ leads us to conclude this image of Diana to have been nothing but _a conical, or pyramidal stone_, that fell from the clouds. For he tells us,[L] on unquestionable authorities, that many others of the images of heathen deities were merely such.
Herodian expressly declares,[M] that the Phoenicians had no statue of the sun, polished by hand, to express an image; but only had a certain _great stone, circular below, and ending with a sharpness above, in the figure of a cone, of black colour. And they report it to have fallen from heaven, and to be the image of the sun_.
So Tacitus says,[N] that at Cyprus, _the image of Venus was not of human shape; but a figure rising continually round, from a larger bottom to a small top, in conical fashion_. And it is to be remarked, that _Maximus Tyrius_ (who perhaps was a more accurate mathematician,) says, the stone was _pyramidal_.