422 SPECIAL RESULTS IN THE UEANOLOGICAL 



Spartans, 176 years before the fall of the enormous meteoric 

 mass at JSgos Potamoi. Edouard Biot has discovered in the 

 Ma-tuan-lin, which contains extracts from the astronomical 

 section of the oldest imperial annals, 16 falls of aerolites for 

 the interval between the middle of the 7th century B.C. and 

 the 333d year of our era ; whereas Greek and Roman writers 

 mention only 4 such phenomena for the same interval. 



It is worthy of remark, that the Ionic school, in early 

 accordance with our present opinions, assumed the cosmical 

 origin of meteoric stones. The impression made on all the 

 Hellenic nations by so grand a phenomenon as that of 

 Mgos Potamoi (at a spot wliich 62 years later was ren- 

 dered still more celebrated by the victory of Lysander over 

 the Athenians, which terminated the Peloponnesian War), 

 must have exercised a decided and not sufficiently re- 

 garded influence on the direction and development of the 

 Ionic Physical Philosophy ( 681 ). Anaxagoras of Clazo- 

 mene was at the ripe age of 32 years when this remarka- 

 ble event in nature took place. He viewed the heavenly 

 bodies in general as stony masses torn off from the Earth 

 by the violent action of the revolving force (Plut. de 

 plac. Philos. iii. p. 13 ; and Plato de legib. xii. p. 9667), 

 and deemed that these solid stony bodies were rendered 

 glowing by the fiery aether, so that they radiate back the 

 light imparted to them by the aether. According to Theo- 

 phrastus (Stob. Eclog. phys. lib. i. p. 560), Anaxagoras 

 said that, lower than the Moon, and between it and the 

 Earth, there move yet other dark bodies, which may occa- 

 sion eclipses of the Moon (Diog. Laert. ii. 12 ; Origenes, 

 Philosophum, cap. 8). Diogenes of Apollonia, who, though 

 not a scholar of Anaximenes ( 682 ), probably belonged to a 



