AEROLITES. 136 



foiming all tilings around it in the same manner as we, ac- 

 cording to our present views, suppose the planets of our sys« 

 tern to have originated in the expanded atmosphere of anoth- 

 er central body, the Sun. These views must not, therefore, 

 be confounded with what is commonly termed the telluric or 

 atmospheric origin of meteoric stones, nor yet with the singu- 

 lar opinion of Aristotle, which supposed the enormous mass 

 of ^gos Potamos to have been raised by a hurricane. That 

 arrogant spirit of incredulity, which rejects facts without at- 

 tempting to investigate them, is in some cases almost more 

 injurious than an unquestioning credulity. Both are alike 

 detrimental to the force of investigation. Notwithstanding 

 that for more than two thousand years the annals of different 

 nations had recorded falls of meteoric stones, many of which 

 had been attested beyond all doubt by the evidence of irre- 

 proachable eye-witnesses — notwithstanding the important part 

 enacted by the Bsetylia in the meteor- worship of the ancieni .< 

 — notwithstanding the fact of the companions of Cortez hav- 

 ing seen an aerolite at Cholula which had fallen on the neigh- 

 boring pyramid — notwithstanding that califs and Mongolian 

 chiefs had caused swords to be forged from recently-fallen 

 meteoric stones — nay, notwithstanding that several persons 

 had been struck dead by stones falling from heaven, as, for 

 instance, a monk at Crema on the 4th of September, 1511, 

 another monk at Milan in 1650, and two Swedish sailors on 

 board ship in 1674, yet this great cosmical phenomenon re- 

 mained almost wholly unheeded, and its intimate connection 

 with other planetary systems unknown, until attention was 

 drawn to the subject by Chladni, who had already gained im- 

 mortal renown by his discovery of the sound-figures. He who 

 is penetrated with a sense of this mysterious connection, and 

 whose mind is open to deep impressions of nature, will feel 

 himself moved by the deepest and most solemn emotion at 

 the sight of every star that shoots across the vault of heaven, 

 no less than at the glorious spectacle of meteoric swarms in 

 the November phenomenon or on St. Lawrence's day. Here 

 motion is suddenly revealed in the midst of nocturnal rest. 

 The still radiance of the vault of heaven is for a moment an- 

 imated with life and movement. In the mild radiance left 

 on the track of the shooting star, imagination pictures the 

 lengthened path of the meteor through the vault of heaven, 



bolically connected in chronology with the cycle of intercalation of the 

 lunar year, with the moon-wori^ip ^t Nemaea, and the games by which 

 it was accompanied, 



