206 COSMOS. 



sation of light from the depths of the star-filled space of 

 heaven leads us back, by means of a chain of ideas, through 

 myriads of centuries into the depths of antiquity. Although 

 the impression of light which streams of falling stars, explod- 

 ing aerolite fire-balls, or similar fire-meteors give, may be of 

 an entirely different nature ; although they may not take fire 

 until they enter the Earth's atmosphere, still the falling 

 aerolites present the solitary instance of a material connec- 

 tion with something ivhich is foreign to our planet. We 

 are astonished " at being able to touch, weigh, and chem- 

 ically decompose metallic and earthy masses which belong 

 to the outer world, to celestial space," to find in them the 

 minerals of our native earth, making it probable, as the 

 great Newton conjectured, that the materials which be- 

 longed to one group of cosmical bodies are for the most part 

 the same.* 



For the knowledge of the most ancient falls of aerolites 

 which are determined with chronological accuracy, we are 

 indebted to the industry of the all-registering Chinese. Such 

 reports reach back to the year 644 before our era ; therefore 

 to the time of Tyrtseus and the second Messenian war of the 

 Spartans, 179 years before the fall of the enormous meteoric 

 mass near ^Egos Potamos. Edward Biot has found in Ma- 

 tuan-lin, which contains extracts from the astronomical sec- 

 tion of the most ancient annals of the empire, sixteen falls of 

 aerolites for the epoch from the middle of the seventh cen- 

 tury, before Christ up to 333 years after Christ, while the 

 Greek and Roman authors mention only four such phenom- 

 ena during the same space of time. 



It is remarkable that the Ionian school, in accordance with 

 our present opinions, early assumed the cosmical origin of 

 meteoric stones. The impression which such a magnificent 

 phenomenon as that of ^Egos Potamos (at a point which be- 

 came still more celebrated sixty-two years afterward by the 

 conclusion of the Peloponnesian war by the victory of Lysan- 

 der over the Athenians), made upon all the Hellenic races, 

 must have exerted a decisive and not sufficiently regarded 

 influence upon the direction and development of the Ionian 

 physiology.^ Anaxagoras of Clazomena was at the mature 

 age of thirty- two years when that event of nature took place. 

 According to him, the stars are masses torn away from the 



* Cosmos, vol. i., p. 132. 



t See the opinions of the Greeks as to the falls of meteoric stones, in 

 Cosmos, vol. i. f p. 133 ; vol. ii., p. 309, note *. 



