1824.] Scietitijic hitelligence. 73 



an ignited state, or from fiery bodies in the atmosphere ; though the 

 application of the terms aerolite and meteoric stone to meteoric iron and 

 stones indiscriminately, render his remarks somewhat ambiguous. 

 There really exists, however, an indeterminate kind of transition, from 

 the masses of meteoric iron entirely free from earthy or stony matter, 

 to the meteoric stones in which that metal is merely disseminated in 

 grains. Thus, placing the Brazilian or Cape iron, and the Benares or 

 L'Aigle stones at the extremities of the scale, the intermediate degrees 

 will be formed by the Siberian iron, with its globules of (so called) 

 meteoric olivine, the Elbogen iron in which globules of a similar sub- 

 stance are imbedded, and the stones which fell near Tabor, in Bohemia, 

 in 1753, containing nearly one-fourth of their weight of iron. A suf- 

 ficient quantity of the metal to impart a knowledge of its usefulness 

 might have been separated from such stones as the latter, without 

 much difficulty; and thus (allowing the validity of Mr. Hodgson's con- 

 jecture), mankind might have been led to the smelting of iron from its 

 ores. It seems, indeed, that the Esquimaux inhabiting the western 

 coast of Greenland, visited by Capt. Ross, actually edge their bone 

 knives with small pieces of iron extracted from a meteoric stone, and 

 flattened for the purpose. Mr. Hodgson is not the only writer who 

 has attributed the first knowledge of metallic iron to the observation 

 of native meteoric masses of that metal, for this idea has also been 

 expressed by Mr. D. Mushet, in his article on Iron-making, in the 

 Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The circumstance is 

 somewhat remarkable, that the same extraordinary masses of iron, 

 which, when first discovered, and even for a considerable subsequent 

 period, were supposed by various writers to have resulted from ancient 

 smelting operations, should now be considerec" as having pointed out 

 to mankind the means of obtaining that metal by smelting. 



Mr. Hodgson appears to have been misinformed with regard to the 

 balls of iron-stone found in Sicily, which he alludes to: they certainly 

 have no similarity in substance "to the true aerolites;" aerolites 

 have no peculiar shape, but are extremely various and irregular in that 

 respect ; and the balls of iron-stone have no doubt received the appel- 

 lation of thunderbolts for the same reasons, indirectly derived from a 

 knowledge of meteorites, which induced different nations of antiquity 

 to confer it on various other minerals, and even on certain organic 

 remains. E. W. B. 



II. Composition of Ancient Bronze. 



The following particulars respecting ancient bronze are derived from 

 two papers by the late Dr. E. D. Clarke, read before the Society of An- 

 tiquaries a few years since, and published in their Archaeologia ; but 

 not hitherto transferred to any more general medium of scientific 

 information. 



In Dr. Clarke's ** Observations upon some Celtic Remains discovered 

 near Saxvslon, seven miles from Cambridge" Arch. vol. xviii. p. 340 — 

 343, he describes certain antiquities which had been found on the 

 3d of August, 1816, accompanying a human skeleton, about three feet 

 below the surface of the ground, on the top of a small eminence called 

 Huckeridge Hill. They consisted of two vessels of bronze, some 

 fragments of the coarsest black terracotta, an iron sword entirely con- 

 verted into oxide, a massy bronze ring which had been the foot of the 

 larger vessel, the iron umbo of a shield, a bronze broach or buckle, 



