334 J. Lawrence Sinith on Meteorites. 
ever reasonable the admission of this orbital motion immediately 
before and for some time previous to their contact with the earth, 
the assumption of their original cosmical origin would appear-to 
have no support in the many characteristics of meteoric bedies as 
enumerated some pages back. The form alone of these bodies is 
any thing but what ought to be expected from a gradual condensa- 
tion and consolidation; all the chemical and mineralogical charac- 
ters are opposed to this supposition. If the advocates of this theory 
do not insist on the last feature of it, then the theory amounts to 
but little else than a statement that meteoric stones fall to us from 
space while having an orbital motion. In order to entitle this 
planetary theory to any weight it must be shown, how, bodies 
formed and constructed as these are, could be other than frag- 
ments of some very much larger mass. 
As to the existence of meteoric stones in space, travelling ina 
special orbit prior to their fall, there can be but little doubt when 
we consider their direction and velocity; their composition proving 
them to be of extra-terrestrial origin. This, however, only con- 
s in part to their origin, and those who will examine them 
chemically will feel convinced that the earth is not the first great 
mass that meteoric stones have been in contact with, and this 
conviction is strengthened when we reflect on the strong marks of 
community of origin so fully dwelt upon. 
It is then in consideration of what was the connection of these 
bodies prior to their having an independent motion of their own 
that this memoir will be concluded. 
Lunar Origin of Meteoric Stones.—It only remains to bring 
forward the facts already developed, to prove the plausibility of 
this origin of meteorites. 
It is a theory that was proposed as early as 1660 by an Italian 
philosopher, Terzago, and advanced by Olbers in 1795, without 
any knowledge of its having been before proposed; it was sustained 
by Laplace with all his mathematical skill from the time of its 
adoption to his death; it was also advocated on chemical grounds 
by Berzelius, whom I have no reason to believe ever changed his 
views in this matter, and to these we have to add the following 
distinguished mathematicians and philosophers: Biot, Brandes, 
Poisson, Quetelet, Arago and Benzenberg who have at one time 
or another advocated the Lunar origin of meteorites. 
Some of the above astronomers abandoned the theory, among 
them Olbers and Arago, but they did not do so, from any sup- 
posed defect in it, but from adopting the assumption that shooting 
stars and meteorites were the same; and on studying the former 
and applying the phenomena attendant upon them to meteor 
ites, the supposed lunar origin was no longer possible. a 
~ On referring to the able researches of Sears C. Walker on the 
a 
Pe ar eal NRT te ie ae 
