Section II., lS9(i. [ 69 ] Tkans. E. S. C. 



ly. — Aerolites and Religion. 



By Arthur Harvey. 



(Read May 18, 1895.) 



Few natural phenomena are more teiTif3ang than the fall of an 

 aerolite. A ball of tire, often said to be " as big as the moon," suddenly 

 appears, moving with marvellous swiftness. A noise, as of cannon, fol- 

 lowed by the rattle of musketry, stuns the ears. Perhaps a cloud is 

 formed, emitting a shower of stones. Sometimes there is a second loud 

 report, a continuous rumbling that lasts for minutes, a hissing sound, and 

 thousands of missiles bombard an area several miles across. Or there 

 may be a whizz from a body enveloped in smoke, leaving a trail of fire. 

 The fireball may emit jets of fiame and disappear with a noise as of dis- 

 tant thunder, or it may actually fall in the sight of the observer. It may 

 rush at the rate of twenty miles a second over a thousand miles of earth 

 and sea, at a height of a hundred miles or so, dropping a fragment here 

 and another there, or it may come vertically down. If it buries itself in 

 the soil, it may penetrate several feet. If it falls in the ocean, it is, of 

 course, for ever lost. But it may strike a rock with but a scanty cover- 

 ing, or ice or snow, or hard packed sand, or trees and even buildings. 

 Then it is usually found to be hot, and of a shape, colour and material 

 utterly unlike the stones of earth. 



It would be surprising if in the earlier ages of the world men had 

 not seen in the meteorite not merely a message from the gods but a mes- 

 senger, a very god himself. All natural religion begins with fear, though 

 it may end with love, and in the study of the history of religions it may be 

 that the sun and his powers have received too exclusive attention. Zeus 

 has certainly been ethnically, etymological ly, astronomically sujîreme ; 

 yet the thunderstorm, with its attendant terrors, or the I'arer and still 

 more dreadful meteorite, must have received the earliest notice of prim- 

 itive man, whether on the prairies of America, the stejDpes of Eussia, the 

 dry littoral of the Mediterranean, or the sandy plains of Arabia. There 

 are, indeed, many traces of a very early and very widely spread cult of 

 the aerolite, especially among the races of nomadic habits, and to some 

 of these this paper is intended to refer. 



In the Greek fable, Chronos used to devour his children (^Tempus 

 edax rerum), but, one day, they saved Zeus by giving his father a stone to 

 crunch, instead. The stone itself, Pausanias says, was shown at Delphi, 

 near the tomb of Neoptolemos, in the precincts sacred to Apollo. This 

 was probably an aerolite. The image of Diana at Ej^hesus referred to by 



