NATURE 
Th 
THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1870 
WHENCE COME METEORITES ? 
STANISLAS MEUNIER, the collaborateur of M. 
Daubrée, at the Fardin des Plantes, has worked 
with much assiduity during the past two years at the 
analysis of certain of the meteorites contained in the now 
important collection of these bodies in Paris; and in a 
recent number of this journal an account was given of a 
view propounded in Cosmos by M. Meunier as an answer 
to the question, Whence come Meteorites ? 
Whether M. Meunier’s theoretical conclusions are to be 
looked on with the same favour that we heartily accord to 
his practical work is what we are about to discuss. 
Briefly stated, his view is, that the character of the 
meteorites that fall on the earth has, during the short 
period embraced by human history, undergone a change. 
He supposes that formerly—-by what he deems to have been 
a providential arrangement for the supply of metallic iron 
to our earliest ancestors, ere metallurgy had become an 
art—the meteorites that fell were {of iron. Subsequently, 
and in our own particular age, stony meteorites have 
been descending to us of what M. Meunier terms the 
type commun, ‘Ne may, perhaps, more accurately de- 
scribe them as fine grained mixed rocks often presenting 
spherular structure, and consisting of magnesian and 
ferro-magnesian silicates, associated with small quantities 
of augitic and felspathic minerals, nickeliferous iron, and 
ferrous monosulphide (troilite), the last two sporadically 
disseminated in variable amounts. 
These, then, are the meteorites that are falling now. 
Already M. Meunier thinks he sees the beginning of anew 
order of meteoric falls, though he does not give a single 
fact to show that such is the case, in the occasional visit to 
our earth of what he calls “the lavas” of the type of the 
meteorite of Stannern (which fell 22nd May, 1808), and of 
the carbonaceous meteorites, like that of Cold Bokkveldt 
(of 13th October, 1838). The former of these two very 
dissimilar kinds of meteorites consists, we may state, 
chiefly of a mixture of augite and anorthite, with a 
scarcely discernible amount of nickel-iron ; in the latter 
kind graphite and solid hydro-carbon, strange to say, are 
met with, mixed with enstatite or olivine. These M. 
Meunier tells us are to be the meteorites of the imme- 
diate future. We fail, however, to see that these are less 
our contemporaries than are those of the ¢yfe commun, 
except, indeed, that there are fewer of them. After they 
have had their day, our children may begin to look out for 
granitoid rocks, and perhaps even for portions of strati- 
fied deposits; andif we are disposed to ask “ What next ?” 
we must push M. Meunier’s hypothesis to the logical 
conclusion his modesty seems to shrink from, and leave 
it to our remoter descendants to search diligently among 
the meteoric falls of their time for the fossil relics of 
organisms that may once have flourished on a now demo- 
lished world—providentially, let us suppose, reserved till 
those latter days, that they may reveal the answer to that 
keenly debated problem which Sir David Brewster linked 
with the hopes of the philosopher and the faith of the 
Christian ! 
For M. Meunier supposes meteorites to be the shattered 
morsels of a satellite smaller than and perhaps subordi- 
a . 
VOL. I. 
nated to the moon, which has run its course and been 
broken up by those internal throes of volcano and earth- 
quake that form the true “defectus solis varios lunzeque 
labores” which are in turn, according to M. Meunier, to 
break up Moon, and Earth, and Sun himself. 
The fragments of this satellite he believes to be now 
careering in every direction, retrograde as well as direct, 
around our world, and gradually falling into its surface ; 
the iron masses, as possessing the greatest specific gravity, 
having already descended ; the rest following and to 
follow in the order of their densities. Certainly, we may 
observe, 2 imine, that this satellite must have been a 
very minute one, or its metallic ingredient in very small 
proportion to its other materials, if the iron meteorites that 
have reached the earth in historic times represent in any 
considerable proportion the amount of that ingredient. 
And it is not very easy to see what is to bring to the earth 
masses of matter, however small, moving in orbits round 
it, unless it be the retardation caused by their coming 
into contact with its atmosphere ; an influence that would 
of course act in precisely the inverse manner to that 
assumed by M. Meunier, as the masses of lowest specific 
gravity would be the first to succumb to it. 
But what are M. Meunier’s grounds for this hypothesis ? 
Does he explain anomalies in the moon’s motion by it? 
Or does he rest it on what would certainly be at least 
a plausible ground for linking the meteorites by some 
close bond of attraction and direction of motion with 
the earth—on the fact, namely, that over one region in 
India, near to the greatest mountain protuberance on 
our globe, the recorded falls of meteorites are more 
numerous than on any other spot? a fact, however, that 
we believe has an altogether different explanation. M. 
Meunier does not even hint at such arguments as these. He 
goes to tradition, to a fragment of A®schylus, and to such 
comparatively modern evidence as that of an Icelandic 
Saga. In the former allusion is made to the well- 
known stone-strewn plain of the Crau, north-west of 
Marseilles, which according to the ancient myth was the 
scene of the contest between Hercules and the Ligures, 
when Zeus rained down a shower of stones to aid the 
hero. Now, ifa myth venerable four centuries before 
Christ has any bearing on the question, this passage 
would certainly seem to hint that the gvéle de galets, 
which M. Meunier quotes from Bouillet’s translations (in 
the original it is vupds orpoyytiwy mérpwv), records a 
familiarity in those ancient days with falls of stones 
rather than of masses of iron, and certainly the quotation 
M. Meunier gives from a translation of the Edda might 
embody an allusion at least as happily to the aurora or to 
an eruption of Hecla as toa fall of meteorites. M. Meunier 
does not allude to the meteorite of Troy or of AEgospotamos 
or to the image of the Ephesian Artemis ; and these were 
surely stones. So was the meteorite of Emesa, and if it 
be meteoric, such must be that other venerable fetish the 
Caaba stone. We need not perhaps discuss M. Meunier’s 
wonderful attempt to connect by etymology the Latin sidus 
with the Greek cidnpos, if this is what he implies by saying 
that oidypos had the double meaning of a star and of 
iron. But dismissing these cloudy reasonings, we may con- 
sider two other arguments brought forward by M. Meunier. 
One of these consists in the paucity of the number of 
iron meteorites that have been seen to fall as compared 
F 
