METEORIC STONES. 223 



by fancying a greater ? But if it is alleged that the stones 

 come from volcanoes already known, we demand, what volcano 

 exists in the Peninsula of India, or in England, or in France, 

 or in Bohemia ? And if it is said that these bodies are 

 projected by Hecla, Mtna, Vesuvius, to all manner of dis- 

 tances, we must ask, whether this is not explaining what is 

 puzzling, by assuming what is impossible? It is surely 

 much better to rest satisfied with recording the fact, and 

 leaving it under all its difficulties, than to increase its wonders 

 by the addition of a miracle. 



The same remark may be extended to those who have 

 fancied that the constituent parts of the stones exist in the 

 atmosphere, and are united by the fire of a meteor, or by the 

 electric fluid. We have no right to make any such hypothe- 

 sis. We have never seen iron, silica, nickel, in the gaseous 

 state. These bodies may, for aught we know, be compounds 

 of oxygen and azote or hydrogen, &c. ; but as yet we have no 

 reason to think so. Besides, he who amuses us with this 

 clumsy and gratuitous explication, will probably account for 

 every other phenomenon by a similar process of creation. 

 He may, with equal plausibility, conceive the earth to be 

 formed by a union of burnt gases, and then cover it with 

 vegetables, and people it with living creatures, by a few more 

 conflagrations and explosions. Such, however, is the theory 

 most heavily expounded by M. Izarn spun, with tiresome 

 and unprofitable industry, into cobwebs, which touch e very- 

 fact, without catching it and enveloped in the mist of 

 general logical positions, which faintly conceal the funda- 

 mental postulate an entire act of creation. 



From the whole, we may safely infer, that the bodies in 

 question have fallen on the surface of the earth, but that 

 they were not projected by any volcanoes, and that we 

 have no right, from the known laws of nature, to suppose 

 that they were formed in the upper regions of the atmo- 

 sphere. Such a negative conclusion seems all that we are, 

 in the present state of our knowledge, entitled to draw. 

 But an hypothesis may perhaps suggest itself, unencumbered 



