METEORITES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 369 



Proust, in a paper published in the Journal de Physique 

 in 1805 (reported in Nicholsons Journal, vol. xii.), de- 

 scribes a stone which fell in 1773 at Sena in the district 

 of Sigena, in Spain ; and gives the results of an analysis. 

 He concludes that such stones " cannot subsist in any of 

 the habitable parts of the globe. But from the eternal 

 cold of the polar regions, where water remains for ever a 

 solid mass, and iron cannot rust, we may reasonably look 

 to these regions as the native place of such bodies." 



But we can now hurry to the close of the story. 



It is pretty evident from the preceding quotations that 

 at the beginning of the present century the attitude of 

 scientific men towards the reported fall of meteorites was 

 one of suspicious indifference. There might be something 

 in it all ; there was fair evidence in many cases that some- 

 thing startling had happened ; but no reliance could be 

 placed upon the evidence of the senses under such con- 

 ditions ; and the witnesses were generally ignorant rustics. 



It had been proved by Franklin that lightning is the 

 same as the electric spark ; and thunder is an accompani- 

 ment of lightning. The witnesses of these events pro- 

 fessed to have heard thunder ; what they saw and found 

 were, no doubt, ordinary stones struck by lightning ; and 

 this conclusion seemed to be supported by chemical and 

 mineralogical study of the stones themselves. 



In the meantime an English chemist was, unnoticed, pur- 

 suing the only satisfactory method of completing the scientific 

 proof which had been initiated by Chladni's acute reasoning. 



This chemist, Edward Howard by name, collected pieces 

 -of four stones, those which Tell at Sienna, Wold Cottage, 

 Benares, and one which fell during a thunder-storm in 1753 

 in Bohemia. He made analyses of them and submitted them 

 for mineralogical investigation to the Count de Bournon. 



The results of his long and patient investigation were 

 communicated to the Royal Society in 1803. He con- 

 cluded that all these four stones had nearly the same 

 chemical composition ; and that though there was nothing 

 actually new in them, their mineral composition was so un- 

 like that of all terrestrial stones, and so similar for the four 



