HERMANN VON H ELM HOLT Z 293 



tlon to be expended in heating the soHd mass, would raise a piece of 

 meteoric iron 1,000° C. in temperature, or, in other words, to a vivid 

 red heat. Now the average velocity of the meteors seems to be 

 thirty or forty times the above amount. To compensate this, how- 

 ever, the greater portion of the heat is, doubtless, carried away by the 

 condensed mass of air which the meteor drives before it. It is known 

 that bright meteors generally leave a luminous trail behind them, 

 which probably consists of several portions of the red-hot surfaces. 

 Meteoric masses which fall to the earth often burst with a violent ex- 

 plosion, which may be regarded as a result of the quick heating. 

 The newly-fallen pieces have been for the most part found hot, but 

 not red-hot, which is easily explainable by the circumstances, that 

 during the short time occupied by the meteor in passing through the 

 atmosphere, only a thin, superficial layer is heated to redness, while 

 but a small quantity of heat has been able to penetrate to the interior 

 of the mass. For this reason the red heat can speedily disappear. 



Thus has the falling of the meteoric stone, the minute remnant of 

 processes which seems to have played an important part in the forma- 

 tion of the heavenly bodies, conducted us to the present time, where 

 we pass from the darkness of hypothetical views to the brightness 

 of knowledge. In what we have said, however, all that is hypo- 

 thetical is the assumption of Kant and Laplace, that the masses of 

 our system were once distributed as nebulae in space. 



On account of the rarity of the case, we will still further remark, 

 in what close coincidence the results of science here stand with the 

 earlier legends of the human family, and the forebodings of poetic 

 fancy. The cosmogony of ancient nations generally commences v/ith 

 chaos and darkness. 



Neither is the Mosaic tradition very divergent, particularly when 

 we remember that that which Moses names heaven is different from 

 the blue dome above us, and is synonymous with space, and that the 

 unformed earth, and the waters of the great deep, which were after- 

 wards divided into waters above the firmament, and waters below the 

 firmament, resembled the chaotic components of the world. 



Our earth bears still the unmistakable traces of its old fiery fluid con- 

 dition. The granite formations of her mountains exhibit a structure, 

 which can only be produced by the crystallization of fused masses. 

 Investigation still shows that the temperature in mines, and borings, 



