356 



NA TURE 



[August 12, 1897 



belief that they had fallen from the shores of the Silver River, 

 Heavenly River, or Milky Way, after they had been used by 

 her as weights with which to steady her loom. One of these 

 stones was presented by its late owner to the British Museum, 

 and it is in its collection of meteorites. 



There is a curious institution among the Chinese that has 

 existed, according to Biot, from a time more than one thousand 

 years before Christ. The Chinese attributed to different 

 groups of stars a direct influence upon different parts of the 

 empire. Some of these groups correspond, for example, to 

 the imperial palaces, to the rivers, the roads, and the 

 mountains of China. By reason of this belief, regular observ- 

 ations are made by the imperial astronomers of all that passes 

 in the heavens, especially of the groups of stars in which 

 comets and meteors originate, or across which they travel. The 

 interpretation of what is seen in the sky forms part of the 

 duties of these very important officials. These observations 

 have been carefully written out, and are preserved in the 

 archives of the empire. Upon the ending of a dynasty, by 

 change of name or otherwise, these comet and meteor records 

 have been published as a special chapter of the chronicles of 

 the dynasty. The existing dynasty began in 1647, since which 

 ■date the records are, therefore, unpublished. 



In 1492 a stone of 300 pounds weight fell at Ensisheim, 

 in Alsace. The Emperor Maximilian, then at Basel, had the 

 5tone brought to the neighbouring castle, and a Council of State 

 "was held to consider what message from heaven the stonefall 

 brought to them. As a result, the stone was hung up in the 

 church with an appropriate legend, and with strictest command 

 that it should ever remain there intact. It was held to be an 

 omen of import in the contest then in progress with France 

 and in the contest impending with the Turks. Nineteen 

 years later a shower of stones fell near Crema, east of Milan. 

 The Pope was at war with the French, and the stones fell into 

 the French territory. Before the year had passed the French, 

 after a long possession of Lombardy and serious threatening of 

 the States of the Church, were forced to retire from Italy. At 

 this time Raphael was painting for an altar-piece his magni- 

 ificent Madonna di Foligno, now in the Vatican. Beneath the 

 •rainbow in the picture, indicating divine reconciliation, Raphael 

 »painted also this Crema fireball, apparently to set forth divine 

 -aid and deliverance. 



I have thus rapidly gone over some selected facts, showing 

 how the mound builders, the wild Africans, the Hindoos, the 

 Japanese, the Chinese, the modern Europeans have been ready 

 to revere these mysterious bodies that come from the skies. 

 JBut it is in the Greek and Latin literature that we have reason 

 to expect the more numerous and full accounts, both legendary 

 -and historic, of this reverence and worship. 



It is now, I believe, admitted by the best scholars that both 

 in Greece and in Ital)', there was a period earlier than the age 

 of images, when the objects worshipped were not wrought by 

 hand, Men worshipped trees and caves, groves and mountains, 

 and also unwrought stones. Even after men began to make 

 their objects of worship, these were in many cases mere hewn 

 stones, not images. The earlier Greek term o7a\/<o, an object 

 of worship, stands apart from the later term e'lKtiiu, image. 



What would be more natural in that age to the affrighted 

 witnesses of the most magnificent of spectacles, the fall of a 

 meteorite, than for them to regard the object which had come 

 out of a clear sky, with terrific noise and fire and smoke, as 

 something sent to them by the gods to be revered and wor- 

 shipped ? It was nobler to worship a stone fallen from the sky 

 than one of earthly origin. 



The worship of an unwrought stone once established has 

 wonderful vitality. For example, the Greek writers speak of 

 such a worship in their day among the Arabian tribes. When 

 Mohammed, with his intense iconoclasm, came down upon 

 Mecca and took the sacred city, he either for reasons of policy, 

 or from feeling, spared the ancient worship of this black stone. 

 Entering into the sacred enclosure, he approached and saluted it 

 with his staff (where it was built into the corner of the Kaaba), 

 made the sevenfold circuit of the temple court, returned and 

 kissed the stone, and then entered the building and destroyed 

 the 360 idols within it. To-day that stone is the most sacred 

 jewel of Islam. Towards it each devout Moslem is bidden to 

 look five times a day as he prays. It is called the Right Hand 

 of God on Earth. It is reputed to have been a stone of Para- 

 dise, to have dropped from heaven together with Adam. Or, 

 again, it was given by Gabriel to Abraham to attest his divinity. 



NO. 1450, VOL. 56] 



Or, again, when Abraham was reconstructing the Kaaba that 

 had been destroyed by the deluge, he sent his son Ishmael for 

 a stone to put in its corner, and Gabriel met Ishmael and gave 

 him this stone. It was originally transparent hyacinth, but 

 became black by reason of being kissed by a sinner. In the 

 day of judgment it will witness in favour of all those who have 

 touched it with sincere hearts, and will be endowed with sight 

 and speech. The colour of this stone, according to Burckhardt, 

 is deep reddish brown, approaching to black ; it is like basalt, 

 and is supposed by some to be a meteorite. 



It is not important for my purpose to separate the history from 

 the myth. Eusebius quotes I'rom an old Phoenician writer, San- 

 chouniathon, that the goddess Astarte found a stone that fell 

 from the air, that she took it to Tyre, and that they worshipped 

 it there in the sacred shrine. We have reason to question 

 whether that Phoenician writer ever lived. What matters it ? 

 The existence of the story in Eusebius' time has to us a signifi- 

 cance not greatly unlike that of the existence of the worship 

 itself in the earlier years. 



Virgil describes a detonating meteor in such terms that I feel 

 reasonably sure that either he had seen and heard, or else he had 

 had direct conversations with others who had seen and heard, a 

 splendid example of these meteors. The passage is in the 

 second book of the /Eneid. The city of Troy was captured 

 and was burning. All was in confusion. The family of /Eneas 

 was gathered ready for flight, but Anchises would not go. An 

 omen, lambent flames on the head of his grandson, began only 

 to shake his purpose to perish with his country. He prayed for 

 more positive guidance. It is ^neas who describes the scene : 



" Hardly had the old man spoken when across the darkness 

 a star ran down from the sky carrying a brilliant light torch. 

 We saw it go sweeping along above the roof of the house. It 

 lighted up the streets, and disappeared in the woods on Mount 

 Ida. A long train, a line of light, remained across the sky, 

 and all around the place was a sulphurous smell. A heavy 

 sound of thunder came from the left. Overcome now, my 

 father raised his hands to heaven, addressed the gods and wor- 

 shipped the sacred star. ' Now, now,' he cried, ' no longer 

 delay.' " 



This story is, of course, all legendary, but Virgil's descrip- 

 tion of the scene is true to life as conceived by pagan Rome in 

 his day. 



The images that fell down from Jupiter, or that fell from 

 the skies, are often spoken of by Greek and by Latin writers. 

 I mention three or four cases only where this allusion points to 

 a meteoric origin as possible or probable. The earliest repre- 

 sentative of Venus at old Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, was 

 one of these heaven-descended images. It was not the Venus 

 of the Capitol, nor the Venus of Milo, but as described was a 

 rude triangular stone. 



Cicero, in the grand closing passage of his oration against 

 Verres, calls upon Ceres, whose statue he says was not made 

 by hands but was believed to have fallen from the skies. The 

 earliest of the images of Pallas at Athens was said to have had 

 a like origin. Pausanias saw at Delphi a stone of moderate 

 size which they anointed every day, and covered during every 

 festival with new shorn wool. They are of opinion, he adds 

 respecting this stone, that it was the one given by Cybele to 

 Saturn to swallow as a substitute for the infant Jupiter, which 

 Saturn after swallowing vomited out on the earth. 



There is a marvellous story of a peculiar stone in the poem 

 Lithika by the apocryphal Orpheus. Phoebus Apollo gave the 

 stone to the Trojan Helenus, and Helenus used it in sooth- 

 saying. It was called Orites, and by some Siderites. It had 

 the faculty of speech, and when Helenus wished to consult 

 it he performed special ablutions and fasts for twenty-one days, 

 then made various sacrifices, bathed the stone in a living 

 fountain, dressed it and carried it in his bosom. The stone now 

 became alive, and to make it speak he would take it in his 

 arms and dandle it, when the stone would begin to cry like 

 a child for the breast, Helenus would now question the stone, 

 and receive its answers. By means of these he was able to 

 foretell the ruin of the Trojan State. Whoever framed that 

 story had, I believe, before him a real stone, and the descrip- 

 tion is very like that of a meteorite, saying nothing of its having 

 come from Apollo. The Orphic writer says that it was rough, 

 rounded, heavy, black, and close-grained. Fibres like wrinkles 

 were drawn in circular forms over the whole surface above and 

 below. 



Here I show you a stone such as was described — rounded, 



