GEOLOGY. 285 



meteoric visitations within this period, and that the inference here 

 made is not founded upon the fallacy, that contiguous regions have 

 been as often struck by the fragments of meteors, without, however, 

 having been reported to science, it is only necessary to observe, that 

 the actual falls have been cited to us from districts often the most 

 sparsely settled, while the more thickly settled States afford us no 

 examples of meteors whatever. For instance. South Carolina has 

 two falls; North Carolina two ; Tennessee two; Georgia, Missouri, 

 Iowa, Virginia, Maryland, each one ; while Pennsylvania, New Jer- 

 sey, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the 

 entire British Provinces, furnish not a single example. Turning now 

 to the Eastern world, where the surface is rather more than treble 

 that of the American continent, we have for the same period fifty-five 

 falls, or rather more than four times the American number, which 

 agrees pretty nearly with what we should anticipate, after making due 

 allowance for the more thickly settled state of its occupation, it being 

 just, perhaps, to leave the unexplored regions of the Old and New 

 World to balance each other. Of these fifty-five falls, fifty, or 90.9 

 per cent, have taken place over the comparatively narrow area compre- 

 hended between 41 and 56 N. lat. ; and all but five, that is, 45 of 

 them, between parallels 43 and 54, a zone of the same breadth as that 

 found to be the American region for similar falls. Of the remaining 

 five (i. e. between 50 and 55), three fell in Northern India, one in 

 Finland, in latitute 60, and the fifth at the Cape of Good Hope, in 

 latitude 35 5'. The longitudinal extent of the meteoric region is 

 here much greater than on the opposite side of the Atlantic. It ex- 

 tends from the sea-coast on the west, inland, and obliquely northward, 

 for upwards of 60 ; the greatest number of falls, however, being 

 spread over the first 30 of longitude, and the greatest concentration 

 occurring between the parallels of 46 and 47 of latitude. But it may 

 be necessary to defend this distribution of meteor falls also from the 

 suspicion of the error which might arise from a defective reporting of 

 facts, owing to supposed sparseness of population, and \vant of intelli- 

 gence, over regions where no meteoric deposits are cited. On this 

 point, suffice it to say, that while in the North of Spain, in every por- 

 tion of France, in Sardinia, Lombardy, Bavaria, Bohemia, Silesia, 

 they are most abundant, they are almost wholly wanting in Portugal, 

 Central and Southern Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily, and Hungary, as 

 well as in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Northern Russia. 



Additional evidence bearing on this point is afforded by the locali- 

 ties of the meteoric iron masses, whose time of fall is wholly beyond 

 our knowledge, their chemical composition being such as to impart to 

 them so high a degree of persistence, that they may in particular in- 

 stances be as old as any of the solid portions of the earth's surface. 

 The Old World has presented us with fourteen localities of these 

 masses, eleven of which are situated within the meteoric zone, and 

 mostly between the parallels of 46 and 52 N. lat. The New World 

 has already thirty-two such discoveries, whereof twenty-two are com- 

 prised within its meteoric region, and the most of them are found 

 near the latitude parallel of 36. Nor can we fail to notice another 



