308 METEORS AND AEROLITES. 



1857 at Madura in the Madras Presidency, weighs 138 Ibs. 

 Another is the famous Yorkshire stone, the fall of which first 

 fully awakened attention to this subject. The collection at 

 Vienna is somewhat more numerous than that of our Museum ; 

 but the specimens are inferior in average size. 



No new element, as far as we know, has been recently dis- 

 covered in these bodies. But considerable interest has lately 

 been excited by the observation, in three or four of them, of 

 a bituminous matter, or hydro-carbon, forming a part of the 

 substance of the aerolite. Berzelius first gave some intima- 

 tion of this fact in the case of a stone which fell near Alais 

 in France. But Wohler has more recently detected the same 

 material in a large aerolite which was seen to fall at Bokke- 

 velde in the Cape Colony; and similar observations have 

 reached us from other quarters. The interest attached to 

 this fact depends on the assumption that such hydro-carbonous 

 matters are of vegetable origin ; and that vegetable life must 

 t herefore have existed wherever aerolites containing them are 

 formed ; a very striking conclusion, if authenticated to our 

 belief. Doubts, however, have arisen whether these ingre- 

 dients may not be the product of vegetable matter on the 

 place of fall, thus changed by the heat of the meteoric stone, 

 and becoming embodied in its crust. This question, like so 

 many others, must be submitted to future and exact obser- 

 vation of all the facts concerned. 



Allusion has been made (page 289) to that curious enquiry 



so characteristic of the aims and objects of modern science 



whether the conditions of the earth, as a planetary body, 

 may not be changed in time by the continuous fall of 

 aerolites upon it from age to age ? The same bold specula- 

 tion has been extended even to the Sun, the enormous mass 

 of which must powerfully draw to itself the various loose 

 forms of matter in inter-planetary space, or even perhaps in 

 the sidereal space, through which it is moving. Attempt 



