420 METEORITES. SECT. XXXVI. 



number of private observatories, built and furnished with the 

 best instruments by private gentlemen, whose zeal has been 

 rewarded by eminent success in all departments of the science. 

 (N. 236.) 



So numerous are the objects which meet our view in the 

 heavens, that we cannot imagine a point of space where some 

 light would not strike the eye ; innumerable stars, thousands of 

 double and multiple systems, clusters in one blaze with their 

 tens of thousands of stars, and the nebulas amazing us by the 

 strangeness of their forms and the incomprehensibility of their 

 nature, till at last, from the limit of our senses, even these thin 

 and airy phantoms vanish in the distance. If such remote bodies 

 shone by reflected light, we should be unconscious of their ex- 

 istence. Each star must then be a sun, and may be presumed 

 to have its system of planets, satellites, and comets, like our 

 own ; and, for aught we know, myriads of bodies may be wander- 

 ing in space unseen by us, of whose nature we can form no idea, 

 and still less of the part they perform in the economy of the uni- 

 verse. Even in our own system, or at its farthest limits, minute 

 bodies may be revolving like the telescopic planets, which are 

 so small that their masses have hitherto been inappreciable, and 

 there may be many still smaller. Nor is this an unwarranted 

 presumption ; many such do come within the sphere of the earth's 

 attraction, are ignited by the velocity with which they pass 

 through the atmosphere, but leave no residuum. These, which 

 are known as falling stars and meteors, are periodical ; but that is 

 byjjno means the case with aerolites, which are also ignited by the 

 sudden condensation of the air on entering our atmosphere, and 

 are precipitated in solid masses with such violence on the earth's 

 surface that they are often deeply buried in the ground. 



The fall of meteoric stones is much more frequent than is gene- 

 rally believed. Hardly a year passes without some instances 

 occurring ; and, if it be considered that only a small part of the 

 earth is inhabited, it may be presumed that numbers fall in the 

 ocean, or on the uninhabited part of the land, unseen by man. 

 They are sometimes of great magnitude ; the volume of several 

 has exceeded that of the planet Ceres, which is about 70 miles in 

 diameter. One which passed within 25 miles of us was estimated to 

 weigh about 600,000 tons, and to move with a velocity of about 

 20 miles in a second ; a fragment of it alone reached the earth. 



