370 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



masses — though they came from widely distant places and 

 were asserted to have fallen at very different dates — that they 

 must have had a common origin ; and he concluded, though 

 with diffidence, that they may very possibly be really meteoric. 



This paper attracted much attention in the scientific 

 world, and the opportunity for putting it to the test soon 

 occurred in France, where the new views met with the 

 greatest opposition. A shower of stones fell on 26th April, 

 1803, at L'Aigle in the department of Orne. The eminent 

 physicist Biot was sent down by the French Academy to 

 investigate the matter, and reported that there was no 

 doubt that a violent explosion was heard that day for 

 seventy-five miles round ; that a fire ball was seen, though 

 the sky was clear ; and that about 3000 stones fell within a 

 space of six by two miles. 



From this time the fall of meteorites was no longer 

 doubted. The subsequent discoveries and the present state 

 of our knowledge are admirably stated in Fletcher's Intro- 

 duction referred to above, and can be further pursued in 

 the special treatises on the subject. 



On a review of the whole story one cannot help feeling 

 that although the scientific proof could never have been 

 complete without the work of Howard, and that his work 

 was of an extraordinarily difficult nature, as is proved by its 

 previous failure in the hands of the French chemists, yet 

 the arguments of Chladni might have been advanced at 

 almost any previous period had some sufficiently acute 

 critic cared to examine the evidence without prejudice. 

 The history traced in the foregoing pages is a curious study 

 of the rejection of circumstantial evidence owing to its sur- 

 prising nature and to the superstition with which it was 

 mixed. The fault lay, as is clear from the official state- 

 ment of the French Institute, in the refusal to accept the 

 evidence relating to a phenomenon for which a sufficient 

 cause could not be at once suggested — a very common but 

 a very dangerous attitude. Doubtless our successors will 

 be able to regard with equal curiosity either the prejudice 

 or the credulity with which many a problem is regarded 

 at the present day. 



H. A. Miers. 



