AEROLITES. 115 



jiave been huiied from one of these moving clouds. In less 

 I'requent cases, as in that which occurred on the 16th of Sep- 

 tember, 1843, at Kleinwenden, near Miihlhausen, a large 

 aerolite fell with a thundering crash while the sky was clear 

 and cloudless. The intimate affinity between fire-balls and 

 shooting stars is further proved by the fact that fire-balls, from 

 which meteoric stones have been thrown, have occasionally 

 been found, as at Angers, on the 9th of June, 1S22, having a 

 liameter scarcely equal to that of the small fire-works called 

 Roman candles. 



The formative power, and the nature of the physical and 

 rhemical processes involved in these phenomena, are. questions 

 ill equally shrouded in mystery, and we are as yet ignorant 

 (V'hether the particles composing the dense mass of meteoric 

 *tones are originally, as in comets, separated from one another 

 (u the form of vapor, and only condensed within the fiery ball 

 when they become luminous to our sight, or whether, in the 

 ?ase of smaller shooting stars, any compact substance actually 

 (alls, or, finally, whether a meteor is composed only of a smoke- 

 like dust, containing iron and nickel ; while we are wholly 

 ignorant of what takes place within the dark cloud from which 

 a noise like thunder is often heard for many minutes before 

 the stones fall.* 



* On meteoric dust, see Arago, in the Annuaire for 1832, p. 254. 1 

 have very recently endeavored to .show, in another work (Asie Cenirale, 

 t. i., p. 408), how the Scythian saga of the sacred gold, which fell burn- 

 ing from heaven, and remained in the possession of the Golden Horde 

 of the Paralatae (Herod., iv., 5-7), probably originated in the vague rec- 

 ollection of the fall of an aerolite. The ancients had also some strange 

 fictions (Dio Cassius, Ixxv., 1259) of silver which had fallen from heav- 

 en, and with which it had been attempted, under the Emperor Seve- 

 rus, to cover bronze coins; metallic iron was, however, known to exist 

 in meteoric stones. (Phn., ii., 56.) The frequently-recurring expres- 

 sion lapidibus phtit must not always be understood to refer to falls of 

 aerolites. In Liv., xxv,, 7, it probably refers to pumice (rapilli) eject- 

 ed from the volcano, Mount Albanus (Monte Cavo), which waa not 

 wholly extinguished at the time. (See Heyne, Opuscula Acad., t. iii., 

 p. 261 ; and my Relation Hist., t. i., p. 394.) The contest of Hercules 

 with the Ligyans, on the road from the Caucasus to the Hesperides, 

 belongs to a diiierent sphere of ideas, being an attempt to explain myth- 

 ically the origin of the round quartz blocks in the Ligj^au held of stones 

 at the mouth of the Rhone, which Aristotle supposes to have been eject- 

 ed from a fissure during an earthquake, and Posidonius to have been 

 caused by the force of the waves of an inland piece of water. In the 

 fragments that we still possess of the play of iEschylus, the Promethe^is 

 Delivered, every thing proceeds, however, in part of the narration, as 

 in a fall of aerolites, for Jupiter draws together a cloud, and causes the 

 ''district around to be :d vered bv a shower of round stones '' I'osido- 



