8 AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 
L’Aigle which was heard over an area seventy five miles in diameter 
directly after a swiftly moving fire-ball had been -seen to pass through 
the air. ‘The explosion, or series of explosions, was immediately fol- 
lowed by the fall of two or three thousand stones within an elliptical 
area about 6} miles long and 2) miles wide. ‘The largest of the stones 
weighed 20 pounds, the next largest 33 pounds, but most of the frag- 
ments were very small. ‘The occurrence at L’Aigle proved the correct- 
ness of another of Chladni’s theories, which was that “‘ fire balls’ in the 
sky were nothing more or less than meteorites in flight. 
The oldest still existing meteorite of the fall of which we have an 
exact record is that of Ensisheim, in Elsass, Germany.' An ancient 
document states: 
“On the sixteenth of November, 1492, a singular miracle happened: 
for between 11 and 12 in the forenoon, with a loud crash of thunder and a 
prolonged noise heard afar off, there fell in the town of Ensisheim a stone 
weighing 260 pounds. It was seen by a child to strike the ground in a field 
near the canton called Gisguad, where it made a hole more than five feet 
deep. It was taken to the church as being a miraculous object. ‘The noise 
was heard so distinctly at Lucerne, Villing, and many other places, that 
in each of them it was thought that some houses had fallen. King Maxi- 
milian, who was then at Ensisheim, had the stone carried to the castle; 
after breaking off two pieces, one for the Duke Sigismund of Austria and 
the other for himself, he forbade further damage, and ordered that the 
stone be suspended in the parish church.” ? 
Within the past century many stones and some masses of iron have 
been seen to fall from the sky and afterwards have been collected and 
are now in cabinets, while several hundred specimens have been found 
which are so much like the positively known meteorites that they have 
been classed with them and are jealously guarded in collections. 
Classification. 
Meteorites are generally divided into three classes according to their 
mineral composition: . 
|. “Siderites,” or iron meteorites, which consist essentially of an 
alloy of iron and nickel; 
' A fragment of this meteorite weighing about four ounces (129 grammes) is in 
the general meteorite collection. 
2 Fletcher. An Introduction to the study of Meteorites. P. 19. 1888, 
