AEROLITES. 119 



crust, and are fifteen in number, namely, iron, nickel, cobalt, 

 manganese, chromium, copper, arsenic, zinc, potash, soda, 

 sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon ; constituting altogether 

 nearly one-third of all the known simple bodies. Not- 

 withstanding this similarity with the primary elements into 

 which inorganic bodies are chemically reducible, the aspec* 

 of aerolites, owing to the mode in which their constituent 

 parts are compounded, presents, generally, some feature! 

 foreign to our telluric rocks and minerals. The pure native 

 iron, which is almost always found incorporated with aero- 

 lites, imparts to them a peculiar but not consequently a selenic 

 character ; for in other regions of space, and in other cos- 

 mical bodies besides our Moon, water may be wholly absent, 

 and processes of oxidation of rare occurrence. 



Cosmical gelatinous vesicles, similar to the organic nostoc 

 (masses which have been supposed since the middle ages to 

 be connected with shooting stars), and those pyrites of Sterli- 

 tamak, west of the Uralian Mountains, which are said to have 

 constituted the interior of hailstones,* must both be classed 

 amongst the mythical fables of meteorology. Some few aero- 

 lites, as those composed of a finely granular tissue of olivine, 

 augite and labradorite blended together f (as the meteoric 

 stone found at Juvenas, iniLe Department de VArdeche, which 

 resembled dolorite), are the only ones, as Gustave Rose has 

 remarked, which have a more familiar aspect. These bodies 



* Gustav Rose, Reise nach dem Ural, bd. ii. a. 202. 



f Gustav Rose, in Poggend. Ann., 1825, bd. iv., g. 173-192. Ram- 

 melsberg, Erstes Suppl. zum chem. Handworterbuche der Mineralogie, 

 1843, s. 102. "It is," says the clear-minded observer, Olbers, "a re- 

 markable but hitherto unregarded fact, that while shells are found in 

 secondary and tertiary formations, no fossil meteoric stones have as yet 

 been discovered. May we conclude from this circumstance, that pre- 

 vious to the present and last modification of the earth's surface no 

 meteoric stones fell on it, although at the present time it appears pro- 

 bable, from the researches of Schreibers, that 700 fall annually 1" (Olbers, 

 in Schum. Jahrb., 1838. s. 329.) Problematical nickelliferous masses of 

 native iron have been found in Northern Asia (at the gold-washing 

 establishment at Petropawlowsk, eighty miles south-east of Kusnezkj, 

 imbedded thirty-one feet in the ground ; and more recently, in the 

 Western Carpathians (the mountain chain of Magura, at S/lanicz), both of 

 * T hich are remarkably like meteoric stones. Compare Erman. Archiv 

 fur icisvensliaftliclie Kunde von Russland.\>di. i. s. 315, and Haidinger, 

 iiber Szlaniczer Sdi&rfe in Ungarn. 



