METEORITES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 351 



The criticism of Plutarch himself on the subject is interesting. 

 He suggests that " shooting stars are really heavenly bodies 

 which from some relaxation of the rapidity of their motion or 

 by some irregular concussion are loosened, and fall not so 

 much upon the habitable part of the earth as into the ocean, 

 which is the reason that their substance is so seldom seen". 



Aristotle in his chapter on meteors has some remarks on 

 this event in which he seems to regard the stone as having 

 been blown by the wind ; but Plutarch, who discusses the 

 theory held by some in his own time, according to which 

 the stone was really torn by a hurricane from the top of a 

 mountain, expressly rejects this theory. 



Among these early accounts we find several accurate 

 descriptions of all the phenomena which are now known to 

 accompany the fall of a meteorite ; the bright light, the noise 

 of thunder or an explosion ; and the stone itself is correctly 

 described as of two kinds, either as a stony substance with 

 a burnt black surface, or as metallic iron. 



Thus in the chapter preceding that in which he de- 

 cribes the ./Egos Potami stone, Pliny mentions the fall of 

 a piece of iron among the Lucani in the year before Crassus 

 was killed by the Parthians, and he describes this as being 

 " spongiarum fere similis " ; this expression at once recalls 

 the aspect of several meteoric irons, notably that known as 

 the Pallas iron which we shall have occasion to mention again. 



It is indeed more than probable that most of the iron 

 used by primitive people who have not learnt the art of 

 treating iron ores was derived from such masses of meteoric 

 iron ; and it is to be noticed that in Siberia, Mexico, Chili 

 and Arabia lumps of such material were not only used for 

 weapons, but were much prized on account of their reputed 

 heavenly origin ; Barrow in his voyages reports a mass of 

 this sort found in the mountains behind the Cape of Good 

 Hope which was used in this way. 



In this connection an interesting correspondence took 

 place in 1870 between Sir John Herschel and the eminent 

 Viennese mineralogist von Haidinger, relating to the epi- 

 thet avroy^ouvov or " self-fused " applied to the iron quoit in 

 the twenty-third book of the Iliad ; the word is translated 



