clvi NOTES. 



they could not be touched without buraiag the hand. I have already treated, 

 in my Asie centrale (T. i. p. 408), of the analogy presented by the Scythian 

 myth of " the sacred gold" to .a fall of meteors. " Targitao filios fuisse tres, 

 Leipoxain et Arpoxaiu, minimumque natu Colaxain. His reguantibus de 

 coelo dclapsa aurea instrumenta, aratrum et jugum et bipennem et phialam, 

 decidisse in Scythicam terram. Et illorum natu maximum, qui primus con- 

 spexisset, propius accedentem capere ista voluisse ; sed, eo accedente aarum 

 arsisse. Quo digresso, accessisse alterum, et itidem arsisse aurum. Hos 

 igitur ardens aurum repudiasse ; accedente vero natu minimo, fuisse exstinc- 

 tum, huncque illud domum suam contulisse : qua re intellecta, fratres majores 

 ultro universum regnum minimo natu tradidisse" (Herodot. iv. 5 and 7, 

 according to the. version of Schweighauser). But perhaps the myth of the 

 sacred gold may be only an ethnographical myth, containing an allusion to 

 three king's sons, ancestors or founders of three tribes of Scythians (?), 

 and to the pre-eminence attained by the tribe of the youngest son, or that of 

 the Paralati (?) (Brandstiiter, Scythica, de aurea caterva, 1837, p. 69 

 and 81). 



t 705 ) p. 441. Of metals, there have been discovered in meteoric stones, 

 nickel by Howard, cobalt by Stromeyer, copper and chrome by Laugier, and 

 tin by Berzelius. 



( 706 ) p. 442. Rammelsberg, in Poggendorff's Annalen, Bd. Ixxiv. 1849, S. 

 442. 



( 707 ) p. 445. Shepard in Silliman's American Journal of Science and 

 Arts, 2d series, Vol. ii. 1846, p. 377 5 Rammelsberg, in Poggend. Ann. Bd. 

 Ixxiii. 1848, S. 585. 



(708) p. 445. Compare Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 135 ; Engl. edit. p. 120. 



C' 09 ) p. 446. Zeitschrift der deutschen geolog. Gesellschaft, Bd. i. S. 232. 

 All those parts in the text, between p. 442 and p. 445, which are distinguished 

 by marks of quotation, are taken from Professor Rammelsberg's manuscripts 

 of May ] 851. 



