312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



By the latter part of the eighteenth century the fact of the falling 

 of stones had finally so far been forgotten that a fall which occurred 

 near Luce in France in 1768 caused great embarrassment to the pro- 

 fessor and academicians at Paris, because they did not know what 

 to make of the event as related and the until then unknown material. 

 Lavoisier, at that time a young chemist, but who afterwards became 

 famous, stated that the meteorite might be a kind of iron pyrites. 



In Vienna, also, there existed at that time a complete disbelief in 

 meteorites. The then director of the court mineral cabinet, Andr. 

 Xaver Stiitz, expressed himself concerning the mass of pure iron of 

 Agram, which fell in 1751, and with the acquisition of which our me- 

 teorite collection was founded, as follows : 



Certainly even the clear heads of Germany in 1751, owing to the gross ignor- 

 ance prevailing at that time regarding natural history and practical physics, 

 may have believed the dense iron masses of Agram and Eichstadt to have 

 fallen from heaven, but In our times it would be unpardonable to consider 

 such fairy tales even probable. 



A similar conception prevailed also in America, for when someone 

 told President Jefferson in 1807 that two professors had described 

 the fall of a stone he declared " one can rather believe that two Yan- 

 kee professors lie than believe that stones fall from heaven." 



The German physicist Chladni in the year 1791 first challenged 

 this disbelief in meteorites in his paper on the Pallas iron, and he 

 commended meteorites to the scientific investigation which through 

 the whole past century has been zealously kept up and furthered by 

 certain scholars, especially here in Vienna. 



Now, what do we denote as meteorites? You have doubtless all 

 observed on clear, cloudless nights the sudden appearances and 

 again disappearances of light and fire in the heavens. Such are 

 known to us as comets and meteors, and meteors are again distin- 

 guished as Sternschnuppen (shooting stars, etoiles filantes), and as 

 Feuerkugeln (fireballs or bolides). The astronomers regard these 

 three heavenly bodies, which are not members of our solar system, 

 as identical, one with another. They are connected by intergrada- 

 tional forms, and their varying appearances are but varying phases 

 of one and the same natural phenomenon. 



This identity of shooting stars and of fireballs w^e must, however, 

 to-day regard as quite uncertain, since there are circumstances in- 

 dicative of their independence of each other as well as of comets. 



When fireballs coming from various directions in the heavens reach 

 the neighborhood of the earth, where on dark nights they afford to 

 human beings a sight arousing amazement through the lighting up of 

 the landscape over which they pass as bright as day, they are seen 

 to burst, usually with an explosion, throwing out streams of fire, 

 accompanied by a noise comparable to the firing of musketry. Dark- 



