HANDBOOK OF THE METEORITE COLLECTIONS. 23 



where about the year 1400 of our era, but its meteoric nature seems not 

 to have been fully established until 1812. It has, however, for several 

 hundred years been preserved in the Kathhaus at Elbogen. The Ensis- 

 heim stone was seen to fall on November 16, 1492, between the hours 

 of 11 and 12 in the forenoon, the fall being accompanied with a loud 

 crash like thunder, heard for a great distance. On striking the 

 ground the stone buried itself to a depth of some 5 feet. When ex- 

 humed, it weighed 260 pounds, the portion now remaining weighing 

 some 155 pounds. (See No. 506.) 



Occurrences so well authenticated as the last would, it seems, have 

 gone a long way toward convincing the scientific world, at least, but 

 such was not the case, and as late as 1772, a committee, one of whom 

 was the celebrated chemist, Lavoisier, presented to the French Acad- 

 emy a report on the examination of a stone seen to fall at Luce, four 

 years previously. In this they took the ground that the supposed sky 

 stone was but an ordinary terrestrial rock that had been struck by 

 lightning. 



In 1794, E. F. F. Chladni, a German scientist, brought together all 

 available accounts of the supposed meteorites, calling the attention of 

 the scientific world to the fact that several masses of iron had in all 

 probability come to our earth from outer space. He referred espe- 

 cially to the now well-known Pallas iron, which was found by a Cos- 

 sack in 1749, among schistose rock, and in the highest part of a lofty 

 mountain near Krasnojarsk in Siberia. It was regarded by the na- 

 tive Tartars as a holy thing fallen from heaven, which fact would cer- 

 tainly seem to indicate that it was seen to fall. Chladni argued that 

 this iron could have been formed only under the influence of fire. The 

 absence in the vicinity of scoriae, the ductility of the iron, the hard and 

 pitted surfaces, and the regular distribution of the included olivine, 

 to his mind precluded the idea that it could have been formed where 

 found, or by man, electricity, or an accidental conflagration. Hence, 

 he inferred that it had been projected from a distance, and, as there 

 were no volcanoes known to eject iron and as, moreover, there were 

 no volcanoes in the vicinity, he was compelled to look for an ex- 

 traneous source, and to regard it as actually having fallen from the 

 sky. Incidentally, he argued, the flight of such a body through the 

 atmosphere would give rise to all the phenomena of the fireball or 

 shooting star. 



It was, as has been remarked, as if to direct attention to Chladni's 

 work that there occurred during this same year an observed shower of 

 meteoric stones near Siena, Italy. In December of the following year 

 also a 56-pound stone fell out of a clear sky almost at the feet of a 

 laborer near Wold Cottage in Yorkshire, England, and again in 1798, 

 under similar conditions, many stones fell at Krakhut, near Benares, 

 in India. 



