THE STUDY OF METEORITES. 429 



A CENTURY OF THE STUDY OF METEORITES. 



By Dr. OLIVER C. FARRINGTON, 



CURATOR OF GEOLOGY, FIELD COLUMBIAN MUSEUM. 



THE close of the nineteenth century will mark the end of the first 

 century of the study of meteorites. Up to the beginning of this 

 century the attitude of scientific men toward the accounts of stones re- 

 ported to have fallen from the sky was in general one of scorn and in- 

 credulity. Thus an account prepared with great care by the municipal- 

 ity of Juillac, France, telling of a stone shower which occurred there 

 in July, 1790, was characterized by Berth elon at the time as "a recital, 

 evidently false, of a phenomenon physically impossible" and "calcu- 

 lated to excite the pity not only of physicists but of all reasonable peo- 

 ple." Bonn, in his Lithophylacium Bonnianum, refers to the Tabor, 

 Bohemia, meteorite which fell in 1753, as "e coelo pluvisse creduliores 

 quidam asseverant." Chladni, writing in the early part of the century, 

 speaks of many meteorites which were thrown away in his day because 

 the directors of museums were ashamed to exhibit stones reported to 

 have fallen from the sky. President Jefferson when told that Pro- 

 fessors Silliman and Kingsley had described a shower of stones as hav- 

 ing taken place at Weston, Conn., in 1807, said: "It is easier to believe 

 that two Yankee professors will lie than to believe that stones will fall 

 from heaven." 



The change of opinion on the part of intelligent and especially 

 scientific men, which took place at the beginning of this century, was 

 due largely to the investigation by the French Academy of the shower 

 of stones which fell at L'Aigle in 1803. This investigation established 

 so absolutely the fact of the fall to the earth at L'Aigle of stones from 

 outer space that scientific men were logically compelled to give credence 

 to the reports of similar occurrences elsewhere. Further, the papers of 

 Chladni and Howard published about the same time, strenuously urging 

 that other masses reported to have fallen upon the earth could not, be- 

 cause of their structure and composition, be of terrestrial origin, had 

 much to do with fixing the growing faith that solid cosmic matter not 

 of terrestrial origin does at intervals come to the earth. Since this be- 

 ginning the study of meteorites has been one of constantly widening 

 interest and purport. 



The essentially distinguishing features of meteorites were early 

 made out. Howard in 1802, from a chemical investigation of various 

 "stony and metallic substances which at different times are said to have 



