202 ROCHESTER ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



for our Bath Furnace aerolite, belongs now strictly to the solar 

 system, having, as Kirkwood informs us, its entire orbit in the space 

 between those of Mars and Jupiter. It was, however, originally of 

 interstellar source, and has been captured by Jupiter and tied up to 

 a shorter and more circular orbit, as have other comets to the num- 

 ber of nine. Whence the comet has brought this meteorite it would 

 be interesting to surely know. If, as is most reasonable, from in- 

 terstellar space, then our meteorite is indeed most wonderful. In- 

 teresting, too, that like one of our foreign steamers, it should have 

 come into port exactly on the appointed day. 



Returning to our aerolite itself we find on examination that its 

 composition is a base of fine, compact olivine and enstatite, both 

 silicates of magnesia, with abundant sparkling points of nickel iron. 

 It also has numerous white and gray spherical chondri of like ma- 

 terial distributed through it and breaking firmly with the mass. Its 

 component minerals are thus allied to those of terrestrial volcanic 

 rocks; but in common with other aerolites it shows nothing of the 

 melted slag structure of lavas. 



Stony meteorites apparently show us unchanged minerals from 

 inner parts of the parent cosmic body, as suggested by their con- 

 stantly anhydrous character and their feeble oxidation. That they 

 bring us no new mineral elements would seem to point to their 

 earthly origin. But spectrum analysis of the rays from other 

 heavenly bodies indicates a similarity of composition of all bodies 

 both from the solar system and from interstellar space. The varied 

 direction of meteorites as they enter our atmosphere, notably the 

 fact that some of them have an orbital motion contrary to that of the 

 solar system, points to extra-solar origin. 



A review of the chemistry of meteorites teaches us that they yield 

 only those elements which we know to exist on our globe, and as 

 they have not offered us a single new element we may justly con- 

 clude that the most distant regions in stellar space contain only a 

 repetition in varying proportions and combinations of the same ele- 

 mentar}^ substances as obtain upon our earth. 



