126 Mr. Brayley Inferences and Suggestions in [Mar. 23, 



must be very small, quite inadequate to interfere with the disposition 

 within them, and among one another, of their proximate elements, however 

 discordant in fusibility or specific gravity. It will follow, also, that the 

 final condensation of these vaporous masses cannot take place either very 

 near the Sun or very near the Earth. 



According to observations of the author already published*, the iron 

 meteorites, if not certain single Meteoric Stones (and most probably also 

 the entire nucleus, which in some cases is broken up and falls as a shower 

 of Meteorites), have the form (resembling that of the Meteors themselves, 

 which is nearly that of a flame) of the solid of least resistance, or of one 

 derived from it, and received in fact from the resistance of a medium they 

 have traversed, but having in general one termination, an d sometimes the 

 other also, truncated to a variable extent. This would seem to prove that 

 they must once have been as individual masses, and not merely as portions 

 of a body of which they originally formed part, nor as to their pre-existing 

 materials only in a fluid or mobile condition. These and other significant 

 circumstances are adduced in the paper as tending to the discrimination of 

 the physical changes by which meteoritic masses are affected prior to their 

 entering the Earth's atmosphere, from those which they afterwards undergo 

 within it and from its action, the conclusion arrived at being that the solid 

 Meteorite is finally left, with a slight alteration in figure, and however greatly 

 reduced in volume, in the approximate actual form that of a bubble elon- 

 gated by its being impelled in a certain direction through a resisting 

 medium in which, when in a gaseous state, it left the Sun. 



-The phenomena of Luminous Meteors (Shooting-Stars and Fire-balls) 

 more or less examined by physicists from the latter part of the preceding 

 century (the author having himself endeavoured to elucidate certain cha- 

 racteristic phenomena of Fire-Balis by applying to them the results of 

 modern science*]'), but which, since the appearance of the persistent Meteor- 

 shower in November 1833, have been so assiduously observed and dis- 

 cussed by meteorologists, especially in relation to the periodicity they 

 exhibit, are shown to be entirely conformable to the views of their origin 

 which are enunciated in this paper. The petrological characters of 

 Meteorites themselves, as recently investigated by mineralogists J, together 

 with others before noticed by the author , are also accounted for by 



* First announced in Lectures on Igneous Meteors and Meteorites given at the Royal 

 Institution in 1839, and at the London Institution in 1841. See English Cyclopaedia, 

 Div. Arts and Sciences, " METEORS, IGNEOUS or LUMINOUS," vol. v. col. 604. 



t See "A Sketch of the progress of Science respecting Igneous Meteors and 

 Meteorites during the year 1823," read before " the Meteorological Society" May 12, 1824, 

 and published in the Philosophical Magazine (for October of the latter year), first series, 

 vol. Ixiv. pp. 288-292 ; also Second Supplement to the Penny Cyclopaedia, " METEORS, 

 IGNEOUS or LUMINOUS," and English Cyclopaedia, as referred to in the preceding note. 



} Reichenbach, Haidinger, G. Rose, Maskelyne, Sorby, R. P. Greg. 



Syllabus of Lectures, on Igneous Meteors and Meteorites, delivered at the London 

 Institution in 1841, as reprinted in Phil. Mag., third series, vol. xix. p. 501, with addition, 

 p. 502. 



