GREAT METEORITE COLLECTIONS. 151 



nized were seen to fall. Further, because the phenomena of an 

 extra-terrestrial origin had not any exactness of the definite 

 physical knowledge of those days to clash with. They were Heaven- 

 born (Beth-El) ; they were sacred ; and no questions of gravity or 

 other physical incongruities were allowed to trouble the popular 

 verdict. Still, a short time before the close of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, as more and more of them were found and they were more 

 spoken of, there arose a widespread doubt of their cosmic character. 

 And perhaps it should not surprise us that the more highly edu- 

 cated led among the doubters. 



The two oldest meteorites which we to-day possess — Elbogen 

 and Ensisheim — had fallen, one in Bohemia in about 1400, the other 

 in the Rhine valley in 1492. One was an iron, the other a stone ; 

 both of them were duly taken off to the church, where all material 

 marvels (as these sky-stones, mastodon bones, etc.) were wont to be 

 gathered to be joined to the other less material priestly conundrums. 



In 1753, when Tabor fell in Bohemia, it met before long with 

 some doubts. Born, in 1772, in his mineral work called " Litho- 

 phylactum Bornianum," says of this stone: "e coelo pluvisse 

 creduliores asseverant." And although in 1794 Chladni — the 

 earliest and profoundest meteorite historian — had described the 

 great Pallas meteorite from Siberia and had given cogent reasons 

 for the cosmic character — as opposed to the terrestrial — of this and 

 many other meteorites which he enumerated, the incredulity still 

 continued. Indeed, Chladni, in his great, parent meteorite work in 

 1819, speaks of many which had been thrown away in his day be- 

 cause the directors of museums were ashamed of their presence ; 

 with the implied belief in their celestial character. Most strange 

 is it that the French savants should have been slowest of all 

 Europe to acknowledge meteorites. While Chladni had made 

 many converts in Austria and Prussia, French savants still held 

 aloof. When in July, 1790, a shower of stones — more than 100 in 

 number — fell near Barbotan in S. Western France, a full account 

 thereof was prepared by a committee of citizens who observed the 

 fall, and this document, signed by the municipal chief, was sent to 

 the authorities at Paris. This report was presented to the Academy 

 of Sciences by Bethelon, the notable chemist and physicist. Its 

 reception by the Academy is shown by notes in their Transactions 

 and by a paper at the same time by Berthelon in a Journal of 

 Science. We quote from it twb sentences : "How must we grieve 



