84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In such meteoric stones, and especially in the class called chondrites, 

 on account of the peculiar spherical inclosures found in them, the 

 eminent German geologist, Dr. Hahn, has recently discovered an entire 

 series of organic remains. By a laborious process of grinding down 

 and polishing these fragments he succeeded in producing a large num- 

 ber of thin laminae or delicate stone shavings, which he subjected to 

 a careful series of investigations under the most powerful microscopes. 

 He has recently published a book on this subject, containing on thirty- 

 two plates more than one hundred representations of these laminae of 

 meteorites, every one of which contains different forms and figures, 

 which Dr. Hahn positively identifies not as mineralogical but as or- 

 ganic, and, in fact, as zoological formations belonging to the different 

 classes of sponges, corals, and crinoids. These pictures, which have 

 been reproduced from the original laminae by photography, without 

 any alterations or additions by a draughtsman, must cause great sur- 

 prise to every geologist and paleontologist, who will at once recog- 

 nize the structure of well-known coral types on several of the plates. 

 The majority of the meteorites containing these forms are part of the 

 celebrated great meteoric fall of Knyahinya in Hungary, which took 

 place on the 9th of June, 18G6. 



Dr. Hahn, having sent the whole of his original shavings, compris- 

 ing over three hundred specimens, to the noted zoologist Dr. Wein- 

 land for examination and determination, the latter has also published 

 a report on this subject in a German scientific journal, and the present 

 article is based on the statements of these two scientists. 



The result of a thorough examination of these specimens, with a 

 complete comparison of his own great collection of corals, fully con- 

 vinced Dr. Weinland that a large number of the formations in ques- 

 tion are without doubt remains of cored belonging to the class of the 

 favositines, which on the earth are now to be found only in a fossil 

 state, and then only in the oldest, or palaeolithic, stratum. 



The terrestrial polypous branches of these favositines are composed 

 of polypary tubes running parallel to each other. At the top, where 

 the cups {calyx) open and the then living polyps are sitting, the coral 

 branches of the favosite present a more or less regular network, com- 

 posed of the walls of the different polyps. Besides, this class is es- 

 pecially characterized by the cross-partitions in the polypous tubes, as 

 well as by the regular rows of minute holes in these walls, which facil- 

 itate the connection between each tube with its neighbors. 



Now these polyparies (i. e., bundles of tubes entirely similar to 

 those of the earth's favositines) can be found in a large number of Dr. 

 Halm's meteoric laminae, which originated not from a single but from 

 many separate falls of meteorites. Many of them show with perfect 

 clearness the very same cross-partitions and rows of holes at fixed 

 intervals from each other with so much regularity that it is impossible 

 to admit a coincidence. At the same time, no geologist would attempt 



