COLLECTION OF METEORITES 21 



THE LAEGEST AMERICAN COLLECTION OF METEORITES. 



By L. p. gratacap, a.m., 



AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



|~T requires very little imagination to picture to our eyes the aston- 

 -*- ishment of the inhabitants of the older portions of the earth at 

 the fall of meteorites in days before scientific knowledge had reduced 

 them to ordinary phenomena. What could be better calculated to 

 excite admiration and reverence than a luminous missile suddenly 

 passing athwart the sky, accompanied by detonations, and almost simul- 

 taneously reaching the ground ? Was it remarkable that superstition 

 quickly enclosed them in its mesh of fable and fancy? Believing that 

 the gods were accustomed to descend upon the earth, these visible appa- 

 ritions of flame might not unnaturally seem to them the vehicles, or at 

 least the portents, of their descent. 



In fact, a series of interesting medals or coins struck off to com- 

 memorate these unusual visitations has been found amongst Roman 

 and Grecian antiquities, which have been styled 'Betyl Medals,' from a 

 supposed reference to the Hebrew ' El Bethel,' the house of God, thus 

 implying that the meteorite was indeed, by contemporaries, regarded 

 as a supernatural object. 



Science and observation have long ago determined their cosmic 

 nature, and while opinions may still vary as to their exact origin, their 

 actual constitution is well understood, and their source, in extra- 

 terrestrial streams of moving matter, recognized. 



These strange objects have not diminished in interest because their 

 miraculous origin has become a myth. On the contrary, science, by its 

 exhaustive research, has placed them in the very front rank of objects 

 that excite most vividly the imagination of the investigator. When 

 science, in a perfectly rational way, speculates upon the possibility of 

 one of these celestial visitors having passed through stellar space at 

 measureless distances from our planet, exposed to inconceivable degrees 

 of cold, and again at another time and place in its long transit to have 

 encountered the most intense heat in the neighborhood of the sun, it 

 requires little more suggestion to make it clear why they are to-day 

 placed amongst the most prized specimens in mineralogical collections. 

 The little further suggestion required to awaken the lay mind to a 

 vivid realization of their interest is contained in the modern conception 

 of their origin in dismembered comets, or even disrupted worlds. 



Museums and individual collectors have vied with each other in 



