272 METEORS AND AEROLITES. 



been officially employed for this purpose.* It is only of late 

 years that the science of Europe has placed itself in compe- 

 tition with these extraordinary documents. Though instances 

 of falling stones were continually multiplying themselves in 

 France, England, Grermany, Italy and el&e where, the only 

 memoirs we know on the subject before the time of Chladni, 

 are that of the Jesuit Domenico Troili, and another we shall 

 afterwards notice. The work of Chladni in 1794 formed an 

 epoch in the study of meteorites. This philosopher, still 

 better known by his admirable mode of demonstrating the 

 vibrations and quiescent lines which enter into the phe- 

 nomena of sound, was the first to collect all the authentic 

 instances of aerolites : a catalogue much enlarged since, but 

 very valuable at the time and showing great zeal of research. 

 Until this moment scarcely one man of science had given 

 assent .to the fact, or even considered it as a subject of evi- 

 dence. The speculations of Kepler, Halley, Maskelyne and 

 others, as to meteoric matters in the planetary space, scarcely 

 touched upon the history or theory of meteoric stones. Yet 

 it would seem a case where history had some claim to credit, 

 since the facts were of a nature which imagination or fear 

 could hardly mystify or distort. Meteors seen and heard to 

 explode stones at the same time falling to the earth, and 

 frequently discovered and examined at the time of their fall 

 sometimes falling as single and heated masses, sometimes 

 numerous enough to be described as a shower in more than 

 one case said to have caused death by stroke of their frag- 

 ments ; these are things so simple and distinct in narrative 

 that we could not easily refuse belief to them, even had we 



* The observations from the seventh century before Christ to 960 were de- 

 rived by M. Biot from the work of Ma-touan-lin, an eminent Chinese author 

 towards the end of the thirteenth century. Those of the three centuries suc- 

 ceeding A.D. 960 come under the annals of the dynasty of Soung, which during 

 this period had dominion in China. 



