AEROLITES. Ill 



meditative understanding only, and not to the imagination or 

 to a desponding condition of mind, modern science has been 

 accused, and not entirely without reason, of not attempting to 

 allay apprehensions which it has been the very means of ex- 

 citino-. It is an inherent attribute of the human mind to ex- 

 perience fear, and not hope or joy, at the aspect of that which 

 is unexpected and extraordinary.* The strange form of a large 

 comet, its faint nebulous light, and its sudden appearance in 

 the vault of heaven, have in all regions been almost invariably 

 regarded by the people at large as some new and formidable 

 agent inimical to the existing state of things. The sudden 

 occurrence and short duration of the phenomenon lead to the 

 belief of some equally rapid reflection of its agency in terres- 

 trial matters, whose varied nature renders it easy to find events 

 that may be regarded as the fulfillment of the evil foretold by 

 the appearance of these mysterious cosmical bodies. In our 

 own day, however, the public mind has taken another and 

 more cheerful, although singular, turn with regard to comets ; 

 and in the German vineyards in the beautiful valleys of the 

 Rhine and Moselle, a belief has arisen, ascribing to these once 

 ill-omened bodies a beneficial influence on the ripening of the 

 vine. The evidence yielded by experience, of which there is 

 no lack in these days, when comets may so frequently be ob- 

 served, has not been able to shake the common belief in the 

 meteorological myth of the existence of wandering stars capa- 

 ble of radiating heat. 



From comets I would pass to the consideration of a far more 

 enigmatical class of agglomerated matter — the smallest of all 

 asteroids, to which we apply the name aeTolites, or meteoric 

 stones,^ when they reach our atmosphere in a fragmentary 

 condition. If I should seem to dwell on the specific enumer- 

 ation of these bodies, and of comets, longer than the general 

 nature of this work might w^arrant, I have not done so unde- 

 signedly. The diversity existing in the individual character- 

 istics of comets has already been noticed. The imperfect 

 knowledge we possess of their physical character renders it 



* Fries, Vorlesungen uber die SternJcunde, 1833, s. 262-267 (Lectures 

 on the Science of Astronomy). An infeUcitously chosen instance of the 

 good omen of a comet may be found in Seneca, Nat. Qucest., vii., 17 and 

 21. The philosopher thus writes of the comet: " Quern 7ios Neronis 

 principatu Icetissimo vidimus et qui cometis detraxit infamiam.^' 



t [Much valuable information may be obtained regarding the origin 

 and composition of aerolites or meteoric stones in Memoirs on the sub- 

 ject, by Baumbeer and other writers, in the numbers of Poggendorf's 

 Annalen, from 1845 to the present time.] — Tr. 



