592 COSMOS. 



hours of the night more shooting stars pass by before midnight 

 invisible. We must still long and patiently collect observa- 

 tions. 



The principal characters of the solid masses which fall 

 from the air, 1 believe J have treated of with tolerable 

 completeness (Cosmos, vol. i. p. 117.) in reference to thei> 

 chemical relations and the granular structure, especially 

 investigated by Gustav Rose in accordance with the state 

 of our knowledge in the year 1845. The successive labours 

 of Howard, Klaproth, Thenard, Vauquelin, Proust, Ber- 

 zelius, Stromeyer, Laugier, Dufresnoy, Gustav and Heiu- 

 rich Rose, Boussingault, Rammelsberg, and Shepard, have 

 afforded a rich material, 27 and yet two-thirds of the fallen 

 meteoric stones, which lie at the bottom of the sea, escape 

 our observation. Although it is striking that under all 

 zones, at points most distant from each other, the aerolites 

 have a certain physiognomic resemblance in Greenland, 

 Mexico and South America, in Europe, Siberia and Hindo- 

 stan still upon a closer investigation they present very great 

 differences. Many contain T 9 -^- of iron, others (Siena) scarcely 

 T ^ ; nearly all have a thin black brilliant and at the same 

 time veined coating : in one (Chantonnay) this crust was 

 entirely wanting. The specific gravity of some meteoric 

 stones amounts to as much as 4 -28, while the carbonaceous 

 stone of Alais, consisting of crumbling lameloe, showed a spe- 

 cific gravity of only 1 '94. Some (Juvenas) have a doleritic 

 structure, in which crystallized olivin, augite and anorthite 

 are to be recognized separately ; others (the masses of Pallas) 

 afford merely iron, containing nickel and olivin ; and others 

 again (to judge from the proportions of the ingredients) are 



17 The metals discovered in meteoric stones are, nickel 

 by Howard, cobalt by Stromeyer, copper and chromium by 

 Laugier, tin by Berzelius. 



