"thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th century

[Joel S. Berson]

My further research for "thunder-stone" = "thunderbolt" in the 18th
century, for my Hawthorne project, turned up a scattering in
ECCO.  (The OED has no citations for this sense between 1678 and
1819, even I think Jesse told me in its database.)  Two of these
seemed especially interesting:

1)  The New Book of Knowledge.  Shewing The Effects of the Planets
[etc. etc.].  London: printed for A. Wilde, 1758.  Page 101.

"Of Thunder-bolts or Thunder-stones."  [Section title.]

"Thunder-bolts and Thunder-stones are nothing else but the soeculent
Matter of those Vapours and Exhalations, which are the material Cause
of the Thunder and Lightning, for we see by Experience, that even our
Urine has always some such concreted Dregs belonging to it; and
sometimes pefrect [sic] Stones made out of it, either in the Reins or
Uterers [sic] or Bladder; and why there may not be a Petrifaction in
this Case, I know no reason."

(The author of this "new book of knowledge" seems a bit out of touch
-- Franklin's and the French experiments were in 1752.)

2)  The History and Philosophy of Earthquakes, from the Remotest to
the Present Times [etc.]. By a Member of the Royal Academy of
Berlin.  London: Printed for J. Nourse, 1757.  ESTC attributes this
to John Bevis, saying "A member of the Royal Academy = John Bevis."

Page 189.

"As to the thunder stones which the vulgar believes [sic] always to
accompany lightning, their existence may in my opinion well be
questioned, and I verily believe there never was an instance of any
such thing: it is not however absolutely impossible, that by a rapid
ascent of an hurricane to the clouds there may sometimes be carried
up with it some stones or mineral substances [or Kansan houses],
which being softened and melted together by heat, may form what is
called a thunder stone: but such stones are not found in places where
it thunders; and if any such should be found, it would be more
reasonable to believe that it arose from a mineral substance melted
and formed by the inflamed sulphur of thunder in the earth itself,
than to imagine that it was formed in the air or the clouds, and
projected downwards with the thunder."

(German -- or Berlin-sanctioned -- science was better -- or perhaps
only more wordy -- even in those days. Although this author too is
post-Franklin,.  And I am skeptical about "the inflamed sulphur of
thunder in the earth itself":  did he still think the flash of
lightning was sulphur burning?)

Joel

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