336 J. Lawrence Smith on Meteorites. 
been said; in fact no mineralogist can dispute the great resem- 
__ blance of these minerals to those of terrestrial volcanoes, they 
' having only sufficient difference in association, to establish that 
although igneous they are extra-terrestrial. The source mus 
also be deficient in oxygen either in a gaseous condition or com- 
bined as ir water: the reasons for so thinking have been clearly 
stated as dependent upon the existence of metallic iron in mete- 
orites; a metal so oxydizable, that in its terrestrial associations 
it is almost always found combined with oxygen and never in its ‘ 
metallic state. , 
What then is that body which is to claim common parentage 
of these celestial messengers that visit us from time to time? 
Are we to look at them as fragments of some shattered planet 
whose great representatives are the thirty-three asteroids between 
Mars and Jupiter and that they are “ minute outriders of the as- 
teroids” (to use the language of R. P. Greg, Jr., in a late commu- 
nication to the British Association), which have been ultimately 
drawn from their path by the attraction of the earth? For more 
reasons than one this view is not tenable ; many of our most dis- 
tinguished astronomers do not regard the asteroids as fragments 
of a shattered planet, and it is hard to believe if they were, an 
the meteorites the smaller fragments, that these latter should 
resemble each other so closely in their composition; a circum- 
stance that would not be realized if our earth was shattered into 
a million of masses large and small. 
If then we leave the asteroids and look to the other planets we 
find nothing in their constitution, or the cireumstances attending 
them, to lead to any rational supposition as to their being the ori- 
ginal habitation of the class of bodies in question. This leaves 
_us then but the moon to look to as the parent of meteorites, and 
the more I contemplate that body, the stronger does the convic- 
tion grow, that to it all these bodies originally belonged. : 
It cannot be doubted from what we know of the moon that it 
is in all likelihood constituted of such matter as compose meteoric 
stones ; and that its appearances indicate volcanic action, which 4 
when compared with the combined voleanie action on the face of | 
the globe, is like contrasting Actna with an ordinary forge, 5° é 
great is the difference. The results of volcanic throws and out- § 
bursts of lava are seen, for which we seek in vain any thing but . 
a faint picture on the surface of our earth. Again in the support 
of the present view it is clearly established that there is neither 
atmosphere nor water on the surface of that y, and conse- 
quently no oxygen in those conditions which would preclude the 
existence of metallic iron. tie 
Another ground in support of this view is based on the specific 
gravity of meteorites, a circumstance that has not been insist 
on, and although of itself possessing no great value, yet in cop- 
Junction with the other facts it has some weight. 
