5io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



entertained seriously by scientific men. So eminent a scientist as 

 Lavoisier, after thoroughly investigating a case, decided that it 

 was merely a stone which had been struck by lightning. Falls 

 finally occurred which demonstrated beyond dispute that the missiles 

 came from space, and science recognized the fact that the earth was 

 literally being bombarded, and that human safety was due to the 

 atmospheric armor, scarcely one hundred miles thick, that enveloped 

 the earth. Instances of the destruction of human life from this cause 

 are very rare. Some years ago a meteorite crushed into the home of 

 an Italian peasant, killing the occupant ; and cattle have been known 

 to be destroyed by them; but such instances are exceptional. In 

 1660 a meteorite fell at Milan, on the authority of the Italian 

 physicist Paolo Maria Tezzayo, killing a Franciscan monk. Hum- 

 boldt is authority for the statement that a monk was struck dead by a 

 meteorite at Crema, September 4, 1511; and in 1674, on the same 

 authority, a meteorite struck a ship at sea and killed two Swedish 

 sailors. 



In December, 1795, at Wold Cottage, in Yorkshire, England, a 

 stone weighing fifty pounds dashed through the air with a loud roar, 

 alarming people in the vicinity, and burying itself in the ground 

 not thirty feet from a laborer. This mass, though undoubtedly 

 traveling, when it struck our atmosphere, at a rate of at least thirty 

 miles a second, was checked so completely that it sank but twelve 

 inches into the soft chalk. Great as is the heat generated during the 

 passage of a meteorite through the air, it does not always permeate 

 the entire body. This was well illustrated in the case of the meteorite 

 which fell at Dhurmsala, Kangra, Punjaub, India, in 1860, frag- 

 ments of which can be seen in the Field Museum in Chicago. Of it 

 Dr. Oliver C. Farington says: "The fragments were so cold as to 

 benumb the fingers of those who collected them. This is perhaps 

 the only instance known in which the cold of space has become per- 

 ceptible to human senses." 



Some of the individual falls during recent years have attracted 

 widespread attention. One of the most remarkable is known as the 

 Great Kansas Meteor. It was evidently of large size, flashing into 

 sight eighty or ninety miles from the earth, on the 20th of June, 

 1876, over the State of Kansas. To the first observers it appeared to 

 come from the vicinitv of the moon, and resembled a small moon 

 or a gigantic fire ball, blazing brightly, and creating terror and 

 amazement among thousands of spectators who witnessed its flight. 

 It passed to the east, disappearing near the horizon in a blaze of light. 

 The entire passage occupied nearly fifty seconds, being visible to the 

 inhabitants of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, 

 Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. 



