SHOOTING STARS AND AEROLITES. 



43 



the popular belief in the celebrated cold days of 

 Mamertius, Pancratius, and Servatius(*®). 



The Greek natural philosophers, little dis- 

 posed in general to observation, but incessant- 

 ly, inexhaustibly addicted to speculation on the 

 manifold import of half-seen truths, have left 

 views behind them on shooting stars and me- 

 teoric stones, several of which chime in most 

 remarkably with those at present so commonly 

 entertained of the cosmic nature of the phe- 

 nomenon. " Shooting stars." says Plutarch(*^), 

 in the Life of Lysander, " according to the opin- 

 ion of some naturalists, are not excretions and 

 emanations of the ethereal fire, quenched in 

 the air immediately after their ignition ; nei- 

 ther are they any kindling and combustion of 

 the air, produced by those which have become 

 dissolved in quantities in the upper regions ; 

 they are rather a fall of celestial bodies, occa- 

 sioned by a certain abatement of the centrifu- 

 gal force, and the impulse of an irregular mo- 

 tion, and are cast down, not only upon the in- 

 habited earth, but also beyond it into the ocean, 

 on which account they are not then found." 

 Diogenes of Apollonia(*^) speaks still more 

 clearly on the subject. According to his view, 

 *' along with the visible stars, others move 

 that are invisible, and therefore are unnamed. 

 These last frequently fall to the earth and are 

 extinguished, as was the case with the stony 

 star which descended in fire at Aegos Pota- 

 mos." The Apollonian, who also regards all 

 the other stars (the luminous ones) as pumice- 

 like bodies, probably founded his opinions of 

 the nature of shooting stars and meteoric 

 masses upon the doctrines of Anaxagoras, of 

 Clazomenae, who maintained that all the heav- 

 enly bodies were '• mineral masses, which the 

 fiery ether, in the power of its revolution, had 

 torn from the earth, had ignited and converted 

 into stars." In the Ionic school, according to 

 the statement of Diogenes of Apollonia, and as 

 it has come down to us, aerolites and the heav- 

 enly bodies were placed in one and the same 

 class ; both are alike terrestrial in their ori- 

 ginal production ; but only in the sense that 

 the earth, as the central body, had formerly(") 

 fashioned all around her ; in the same way as 

 our present ideas lead us to conceive that the 

 planets of a system arise from the extended 

 atmosphere of another central body — namely, 

 the sun. These views, consequently, are not 

 to be confounded with that which speaks fa- 

 miliarly of meteoric stones, as of telluric or at- 

 mospheric origin, nor yet with the extraordi- 

 nary conjecture of Aristotle, to the effect that 

 the enormous mass of Aegos Potamos had 

 been raised by a tempestuous wind. 



The presumptuous skepticism which rejects 

 facts without caring to examine them, is, in 

 many respects, even more destructive than un- 

 critical credulity. Both interfere with rigour 

 of mvestigation. Although, for fifteen hundred 

 years, the annals of various nations have told 

 of the fall of stones from the sky— although sev- 

 eral instances of the circumstance are placed 

 beyond all question by the unimpeachable tes- 

 timony of eye-witnesses— ^although the Baetylia 

 formed an important part of the meteor-wor- 

 ship of the ancients, and the companions of 

 Cortes saw the aerolites in Cholula, which had 

 fallen upon the neighbouring pyramid — although 



Caliphs and Mongolian princes have had sword 

 blades forged from meteoric masses that had 

 but lately fallen, and men have even been kill- 

 ed by stones from heaven (a certain monk at 

 Crema, on the 4th September, 1511; another 

 monk in Milan, 1650 ; and two Sweedish sailors 

 on ship-board, 1674), so remarkable a cosmical 

 phenomenon remained almost unnoticed, and, 

 in its intimate relationship with the rest of the 

 planetary system, unappreciated, until Chladni, 

 who had already gained immortal honour in 

 physics by his discovery of phonic figures, di- 

 rected attention to the subject. But he who is 

 penetrated with the belief of this connection, if 

 he be susceptible of emotions of awe through 

 natural impressions, will be filled with solemn 

 thoughts in presence, not of the brilliant specta- 

 cles of the November and August phenomena 

 only, but even on the appearance of a solitary 

 shooting star. Here is a sudden exhibition of 

 movement in the midst of the realm of noctur- 

 nal peace. Life and motion occur at intervals 

 in the quiet lustre of the firmament. The track 

 of the falling star, gleaming with a palely lus- 

 tre, gives us a sensible representation of a path 

 long miles in length across the vault of heaven ; 

 the burning asteroid reminds us of the exist- 

 ence of universal space every where filled with 

 matter. When we compare the volume of the 

 innermost satellite of Saturn, or that of Ceres, 

 with the enormous volume of the Sun, all rela- 

 tion of great and small vanishes from the im- 

 agination. The extinction of the stars that 

 have suddenly blazed up in several parts of the 

 heavens, in Cassiopea, in Cygnus, and in Ophi- 

 ucus, leads us to admit the existence of dark 

 or non-luminous celestial bodies. Conglobed 

 into minor masses, the shooting-star asteroids 

 circulate about the sun, intersect the paths of 

 the great luminous planets, after the manner of 

 comets, and become ignited when they approach 

 or actually enter the outermost strata of our 

 atmosphere. 



With all other planetary bodies, with the 

 whole of nature beyond the limits of our at- 

 mosphere, we are only brought into relation- 

 ship by means of light, of radiant heat, which 

 is scarcely to be separated from light(*°), and 

 the mysterious force of attraction which dis- 

 tant masses exert upon our earth, our ocean, 

 and our atmosphere, according to the quantity 

 of their material parts. We recognize a totally 

 different kind of cosmic, and most peculiarly 

 material relationship, in the fall of shooting- 

 stars and meteoric stones, when we regard 

 them as planetary asteroids. These are no 

 longer bodies, which, through the mere excite- 

 ment of pulses, influence us from a distance by 

 their light or their heat, or which move and are 

 moved by attraction ; they are material bodies, 

 which have come from the realms of space into 

 our atmosphere, and remain with our earth. 

 Through the fall of a meteoric stone, we ex- 

 perience the only possible contact of aught that 

 does not belong to our planet. Accustomed to 

 know all that is non-telluric solely through 

 measurement, through calculation, through in- 

 tellectual induction, we are amazed when we 

 touch, weigh, and subject to analysis a mass 

 that has belonged to the world beyond us. Thus 

 does the reflecting, spiritualized excitement of 

 the feeUngs work upon imagination, in circum- 



