IN THE HIGHER WALKS OF SCIENCE EXAMINED. 55 



cians of France, and one of our own countrymen, of equal rank 

 in the abstract sciences, concurred, about twenty years since, 

 in supporting a theory, in which these remarkable bodies were 

 regarded to be projected from volcanoes in the Moon ; and 

 the English philosopher supported this theory in application to 

 the detail of the phaenomena presented by the meteors. Within 

 these few years another mathematician of Britain, still living, 

 has adopted, and supported in great detail, a theory first 

 broached upon the Continent, that meteorites are fragments 

 of the great planet supposed formerly to have revolved be- 

 tween the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, resulting from the con- 

 vulsion by which it was separated into the four small planets 

 now known to revolve in that interval. Now I can state with 

 some confidence, that the grounds on which the detailed con- 

 firmation rests, of the former theory of meteorites, and all the 

 grounds of the latter theory, are destroyed, by a rigorous exa- 

 mination of the physical history of the meteors themselves, and 

 of the physical characters of the substances projected from 

 them ; and that had such an examination been entered into, in 

 the first place, it would have been seen that neither theory was 

 consistent with the facts. One of the foreign mathematicians 

 alluded-to, it is true, was profoundly versed in almost every 

 branch of physical inquiry ; and the British philosopher last 

 mentioned is also distinguished by his successful researches into 

 the intimate constitution of material bodies, as manifested by 

 their action upon light. But although it may hence be in- 

 ferred, that profound attainments in physics will not always 

 preserve the mind from the effects of a too exclusive reliance 

 on mathematical resources; yet it is manifest, at the same 

 time, that in those habits of thought which are induced by 

 the cautious and minute examination of sensible phaenomena, 

 we can alone expect to find an adequate corrective. 



The union of mathematical and physical acquirements which 

 is manifested in the works of Biot and Arago, and Fresnel, 

 of Borda, and Bessel, and Gauss, presents us indeed with 

 noble examples to follow. Without such union of knowledge 

 the science of inorganic nature cannot now further proceed. 

 But while Dr. Young remained for many years almost the 

 only similar example in this country, and while Mr. Francis 

 Baily, Mr. Herschel, and Mr. Babbage, have, until almost the 

 present day, stood nearly alone as living instances of the same 

 invaluable combination of talent, the facts we have briefly re- 

 viewed may be considered, perhaps, as affording a sufficient 

 apology for the British nation, for preferring the pure experi- 

 mental physics of Wollaston and Davy, and their associates, 

 to the refinements in abstract analysis of Poisson and Fourier ; 





