AEROLITES. 125 



The only media by which we are brought in connexion with 

 other planetary bodies, and with all portions of the universe 

 beyond our atmosphere, are light and heat (the latter of which 

 can scarcely be separated from the former),* and those mys- 

 terious powers of attraction exercised by remote masses ac- 

 cording to the quantity of their constituents, upon our globe, 

 the ocean, and the strata of our atmosphere. Another and 

 different kind of cosmical or rather material mode of contact is, 

 however, opened to us, if we admit falling stars and meteoric 

 stones to be planetary asteroids. They not only act upon us 

 merely from a distance by the excitement of luminous or 

 calorific vibrations, or in obedience to the laws of mutual 

 attraction, but they acquire an actual material existence 

 for us, reaching our atmosphere from the remoter regions of 

 universal space, and remaining on the earth itself. Meteoric 

 stones are the only means by which we can be brought in pos- 

 sible contact with that which is foreign to our own planet. 

 Accustomed to gain our knowledge of w T hat is not telluric 

 solely through measurement, calculations, and the deductions 

 of reason, we experience a sentiment of astonishment at find- 

 ing that we may examine, weigh, and analyse bodies that 

 appertain to the outer world. This awakens, by the power 

 of the imagination, a meditative spiritual train of thought, 

 where the untutored mind perceives only scintillations of light 

 in the firmament, and sees in the blackened stone that falls 

 from the exploded cloud nothing beyond the rough product of 

 a powerful natural force. 



Although the asteroid-swarms, on which we have been led 

 from special predilection to dwell somewhat at length, ap- 



* The following remarkable passage on the radiation of heat from the 

 fixed stars, and on their low combustion and vitality one of Kepler's 

 many aspirations occurs in the Paralipom. in Vitell. Astron. pars 

 Optica, 1604, Propos. xxxii., p. 25 : " Lucis proprium est calor, sydera 

 omnia calefaciunt^ De sy denim luce claritatis ratio testatur, calorem 

 universe-rum in minori esse proportione ad calorem unius solis, quam ut 

 ab homine, cujus est certa caloris mensura. uterque simul percipi et ju- 

 dicari possit. De cincindularum lucula termissima negare non potes, quin 

 cum calore sit. Vivunt enim et moventur, hoc autem rion sine calefac- 

 tione perficitur. Sic neque putrescentium lignorum lux suo calore 

 destituitur ; nam ipsa puetredo quidam lentus ignis est. Inest et stir- 

 pibus suus calor." (Compare Kepler, Epit. Astron. Copernicance, 1618, 

 t. i. lib. i. p. 35.) 



