70 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Eviripidos and in the Acts is described as a bust, with man}' breasts, 

 tapering to a pedestal, the whole of black stone. It fell from heaven, 

 and part of it may have been an aerohte, or it may have been made to 

 replace the original aerolithic deity. The chib of Hercules, worshipped 

 in Thiace. was probably a Thor's hammer, the Thracians being of North- 

 ern kin, and an aerolite. Like the images or symbols of Apollo, the 

 guardian of the ways, and of the Paphian Tenus, it was said to have 

 fallen from above. These uncertain instances are adduced first because 

 the opportunity is afforded thereby to prove that it is not important as a 

 matter of religion to discriminate between a real and an imaginary 

 aerolite. A gentleman still living in Toronto having purchased from a 

 farmer near Niagara a nodule containing quartz crystals, read a paper 

 to a learned societ}', in which he explained its structure as being that of 

 • a planetoid, rounded, flatted at the poles, and he argued that the interior 

 of our globe might be crystalline too. There is little doubt that the farmer 

 saw a meteorite fall, and, picking up this geode, believed it to be the 

 aerolite. Again, one of the secretaries of the Astronomical Society of 

 Toronto, whose famil}' thought thej^saw a meteorite fall into a snow-bank, 

 delved into the drift and brought up a water-worn j^ebble of gneiss, 

 which a less experienced j^erson might have sworn to be an aerolite. So 

 with the objects of the ancients" veneration, it could make little ditterence 

 whether they were really meteorites or not, provided they were believed to 

 have fallen from the skies. 



To ascertain the probable views of the folks of the early ages in 

 Europe, we must now see how the untutored races of the present day 

 regard the aerolite. 



Professor Garner, the well-known student of the speech of monkeys, 

 who says the negroes of the Guinea Coast do not believe in a beneficent 

 god, but rather in a being who does harm, tells the writer that in one 

 African village he found the chief pubhc treasure was two stones, about 

 the size of hen's eggs. The natives said the}' had been shot out from the 

 sun and had killed this malevolent being . . . who had, however, revived. 

 They thought the stones had been alive, and because they still made fire 

 when struck together they thought they were not dead yet, but were in 

 a sort of trance. So they built a house for them and guarded them with 

 care. 



The Rev. H. S. Taylor gives an instructive account of the fall of a 

 meteor, in the Eeport of the Government Central Museum of Madras, 

 1890. Two aerolites travelling through 8])ace together, or two ])ieces 

 torn asunder by explosion, had fallen at Parmallee, Madras, India, Febru- 

 ary 28th, 1857 — reaching the earth two miles apart. Persons were 

 standing near each place of fall. " Many," says Mr. Taylor, " worshij^ped 

 them." And again. '• Of the excitement among the natives I need not 

 speak . . . Some of them supposed they were gods that had fallen." 



