SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 79 



any meteorite, and, in particular, to determine the conditions under 

 which its present constitution as a rock took its origin, we have only 

 for our guide the actual record written on the meteoric mass itself; 

 and it is in this direction that the mineralogist is now working. 



But the progress is necessarily a gradual one. We may indeed 

 assert that the meteorites we know have, probably all of them, been 

 originally formed under conditions from which the presence of water 

 or of free oxygen to the amount requisite to oxidize entirely the ele- 

 ments present were excluded ; for this is proved by the nature of the 

 minerals constituting the meteorites, and by the way in which the 

 metallic iron is distributed through them. 



And one suggestive and significant fact remains to be alluded to ; 

 the presence, namely, in some few meteorites of combinations of hydro- 

 gen and carbon, which if met with in a terrestrial mineral would with 

 little hesitation be assigned to an organic origin. A few grains were 

 exhibited to the audience of such a body, crystallized from ether, 

 which solvent had extracted it to the amount of about 0.25 per cent, 

 from six ounces of the Cold Bokkveldt meteorite. 



Similar substances have been extracted by Wohler, Roscoe, and 

 other chemists, from this and other meteorites. It was, however, ob- 

 served, as pointing to the probability of the comparatively porous 

 meteoric stone having in this case taken up the hydrocarbon as a sub- 

 stance extraneous to it (possibly when in the state of a vapor), that 

 ether extracted it entirely from the solid lumps of the meteorite ; pul- 

 verization not in any way adding to the amount obtained, or facilitating 

 in any appreciable degree the separation of the substance. 



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SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



By PROFESSOR TYNDALL, LL. D., F. R. S. 



THE editor of the Contemporary Review is liberal enough to grant 

 me space for a few brief reflections on a subject, a former reference 

 to which in these pages has, I believe, brought down upon him and me 

 a considerable amount of animadversion. 



It may be interesting to some if I glance at a few cases illustrative 

 of the history of the human mind in relation to this and kindred sub- 

 jects. In the fourth century the belief in Antipodes was deemed un- 

 scriptural and heretical. The pious Lactantius was as angry with the 

 people who held this notion as my censors are with me, and quite as un- 

 sparing in his denunciations of their " Monstrosities." Lactantius was 

 irritated because, in his mind, by education and habit, cosmogony and 

 religion were indissolubly associated, and therefore simultaneously dis- 

 turbed. In the early part of the seventeenth century the notion that 



