94 Meteoric Stones. 
of other planetary bodies, and of their likeness or unlikeness to 
those of the earth. I have communicated in a paper addressed — 
to the Royal Academy of Science,* examinations of various me- = 
teoric stones, undertaken with the design of studying them as 
mineral species, and of thereby enabling myself to determine of © 
what different minerals they are composed. The occasion of the 
investigation was afforded by the friendly commission which 
Reichenbach of Blansko gave me to examine the composition of 
a meteoric stone, whose glancing apparition within the atmos- 
phere of the earth, on the 25th of November, 1833, about 6 o’clock 
in the evening, he himself had witnessed, and of which, with 
very great expense and labor, he finally succeeded in collecting 
the scattered fragments in the region about Blansko. The me- 
teoric stones which I examined, have fallen near Blansko in 
Moravia, Chantonnay in France, Lautolax in Finland, Alais in 
France, and Ellenbogen in Bohemia, and I have also analyzed the 
meteoric iron made known by Pallas from the region between Ab- 
ekansk and Krasnojarsk in Siberia. From the analyses referred 
to, I believe I have discovered that the meteoric stones are m 
rals; as it is absurd to suppose that minerals can be formed in the 
air out of the elements of the air, they cannot be atmospheric pro- 
ducts, and the less so, as many of them present cavities, which are 
filled with a mineral of another color and probably of a different 
composition, which it were a plain absurdity to consider as being 
possibly formed in them during the few moments the attraction 
of the earth would suffer so heavy a body to remain in the atmos 
phere. They become such elsewhere. They are not cast out 
from the volcanos of the earth, for they fall everywhere, not 
merely nor oftenest in the near or remote neighborhood of a vol- 
cano ; their external appearance is unlike a terrestrial mineral, 
unlike any thing which the volcanos eject. Their containing 
unoxidized malleable iron, proves that water is not found, and 
perhaps, not air, in their former abode. They must, therefore, 
come from some other planet, which has voleanos. The oné 
nearest us is the moon, and the moon has gigantic volcanos com: 
pared with the earth. The moon has no atmosphere to retard 
the volcanic projectiles. Collections of water do not appear © 
exist on it, in a word, among the probable sources, the moon '8 
moe 
ss we ~ 
* Kongl. Vetensk. Acad. Hand]. 1834, p. 115. 
