THE STORY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE 



tioned the evidence, and late in the eighteenth century 

 a consensus of opinion in the French Academy had de- 

 clined to admit that such stones had been " conveyed to 

 the earth by lightning," let alone any more miraculous 

 agency. 



In 1802, however, Edward Howard had read a paper 

 before the Royal Society in which, after reviewing the 

 evidence recently put forward, he had reached the con- 

 clusion that the fall of stones from the sky, sometimes 

 or always accompanied by lightning, must be admitted 

 as an actual phenomenon, however inexplicable. So 

 now, when the great stone-fall at L'Aigle was an- 

 nounced, the French Academy made haste to send the 

 brilliant young physicist Jean Baptiste Biot to investi- 

 gate it, that the matter might, if possible, be set finally 

 at rest. The investigation was in all respects successful, 

 and Blot's report transferred the stony or metallic light- 

 ning-bolt the aerolite or meteorite from the realm of 

 tradition and conjecture to that of accepted science. 



But how explain this strange phenomenon ? At once 

 speculation was rife. One theory contended that the 

 stony masses had not actually fallen, but had been 

 formed from the earth by the action of the lightning ; 

 but this contention was early abandoned. The chemists 

 were disposed to believe that the aerolites had been 

 formed by the combination of elements floating in the 

 upper atmosphere. Geologists, on the other hand, 

 thought them of terrestrial origin, urging that they 

 might have been thrown up by volcanoes. The astron- 

 omers, as represented by Olbers and Laplace, modified 

 this theory by suggesting that the stones might, indeed, 

 have been cast out by volcanoes, but by volcanoes sit- 

 uated not on the earth, but on the moon. 



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