THE FALL OF METEORITES IN ANCIENT 

 AND MODERN TIMES. 1 



IN matters of scientific evidence relating to events which 

 took place in early times nothing is more difficult 

 than to place oneself in the position of a contemporary 

 -critic, amid the mental atmosphere of the time, and to 

 regard the occurrence as it then appeared. One cannot 

 help criticising it in the light of subsequent events, and 

 early observers are, in consequence, too often condemned 

 as credulous. In justice to our predecessors and to clear 

 our own vision it is often profitable to review the develop- 

 ment of some article of scientific belief, and to trace the 

 steps by which it has been established. 



In the case of meteorites and the belief in their fall 

 from the sky, the story is a curious one, for this belief, 

 though well founded and ultimately justified, for centuries 

 met with opposition or disregard, not from ignorant people, 

 but from the leaders of scientific thought. 



The fairest, and doubtless the most interesting, way to 

 •gain a picture of the evidence available ioo years ago, 

 •of the impression which it produced upon thoughtful men, 

 and of the reasoning by which they were ultimately con- 

 verted, is to quote verbatim the vivid accounts of eye- 

 witnesses, and the comments which they excited at the time. 



The following fragmentary notes contain nothing new, 

 ■except that some dispersed references are perhaps for the 

 first time brought together. 



By way of preface we may collect the main features of 

 the evidence historical and contemporary as it presented 

 itself to our ancestors towards the close of the last century. 



Ancient literature, of course, abounds with references, 

 some certain and some dubious, to the fall of stones from 

 the sky ; the great stones that fell from heaven in the battle 

 of Gibeon, the hailstones and coals of fire of the eighteenth 

 Psalm, are among the earliest ; a Chinese account re- 

 lating to the year 21 1 B.C. describes the fall of a star which 



1 A lecture delivered in Magdalen College, Oxford ; 19th Feb., 1898. 



