AEROLITES. 131 



found incorporated with aerolites, imparts to them a pecul- 

 iar, but not, consequently, a selenic character ; for in other 

 regions of space, and in other cosmical bodies besides our Moon, 

 water may be wholly absent, and processes of oxydation of 

 rare occurrence. 



Cosmical gelatinous vesicles, similar to the organic nostoc 

 (masses which have been supposed since the Middle Ages to 

 be connected with shooting stars), and those pyrites of Sterli 

 tamak, west of the Uralian Mountains, which are said to have 

 constituted the interior of hailstones,* must both be classed 

 among the mythical fables of meteorology. Some few aero- 

 lites, as those composed of a finely granular tissue of olivine, 

 augite, and labradorite blended together! (as the meteoric stone 

 found at Juvenas, in the Department de I'Ardeche, which re- 

 sembled dolorite), are the only ones, as Gustav Rose has 

 remarked, which have a more familiar aspect. These bodies 

 contain, for instance, crystalline substances, perfectly similar 

 to those of our earth's crust ; and in the Siberian mass of 

 meteoric iron investigated by Pallas, the olivine only differs 

 from common olivine by the absence of nickel, which is re- 

 placed by oxyd of tin.$ As meteoric olivine, like our basalt, 

 contains from 47 to 49 per cent, of magnesia, constituting, 

 according to Berzelius, almost the half of the earthy compo- 

 nents of meteoric stones, we can not be surprised at the great 

 quantity of silicate of magnesia found in these cosmical bodies. 

 *If the aerolite of Juvenas contain separable crystals of augite 

 and labradorite, the numerical relation of the constituents 



* Gustav Rose, Reise nach dent Ural, bd. ii., s. 202. 



t Gustav Rose, iu Poggend., Ann., 182.5, bd. iv., s. 173-192. Ratn- 

 melsberg, Erstes Snppl. zum chem. Handwdrterbuche der Mineralogie, 

 1843, s. 102. "It is," says the clear-minded observer Olbers, "a re- 

 markable but hitherto unregarded fact, that v^^hile shells are found in 

 secondary and tertiary formations, no fossil meteoric stones have as yet 

 been discovered. May we conclude from this circumstance that pre- 

 vious to the present and last modification of the earth's surface no me- 

 teoric stones fell on it, although at the present time it appears probable, 

 from the researches of Schreibers, that 700 fall annually?" (Olbers, 

 in Schum., Jahrb., 1838, s. 329.) Problematical nickelliferous masses 

 of native iron have been found in Northern Asia (at the gold-washing 

 establishment at Petropawlowsk, eighty miles southeast of Kusnezk), 

 imbedded thirty-one feet in the ground, and more recently in the West- 

 ern Carpathians (the mountain chain of Magura, at Szlanicz), both of 

 which are remarkably like meteoric stones. Compare Ermau, Archiv 

 fur viissenschaftliche Kunde von Rvssland, bd. i., s. 315, and Haidinger, 

 Bcricht iiher Szlanicz er Schurfe if. Ungarn. 



X Berzelius, Jahresbcr., bd. xv, s. 217 und 231. Rammelsberg.. 

 Handworferb., ai)lh. ii., 8. 25-28. 



