OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 165 



sh-eet a few feet distant. Mr. "White searched, and found imbedded in the 

 ground a stone of the appearance of dark flint, weighing about two pounds. 

 The stone was broken to pieces, and examined during the day by several 

 scicntifio gentlemen, who pronounced it genuine meteoric substance. The 

 probable solution is that the explosion occurred at a greater distance than was 

 supposed, and that this was but a small fragment of a large aerolite." 



To the many valuable essays on the physical characters of aerolites with 

 which Professor Maskelyne has from time to time enlarged the extent of our 

 knowledge of the real nature of these bodies, and to the unremitting zeal with 

 which he has collected in the British Museum a series of authentic specimens 

 of meteorites not excelled in any other national mineralogical collection, we 

 owe many of the most interesting discoveries and conclusions of scientific 

 importance regarding the probable history of meteorites which have been 

 arrived at in recent yeai's. Some outline of the progress that has been 

 made in these investigations was given in the concluding paragraphs of last 

 year's Report ; but a very valuable summary of the existing state of know- 

 ledge on the composition, structure, and probable history of meteorites has 

 appeared in a series of papers*, published during the past year by Professor 

 Maskelyne, entitled " Some Lecture Notes on Meteorites," to which, as they 

 contain a most instructive review of the many points of information accu- 

 mulated during a prolonged period of successful and diligent research, the 

 Committee has especial satisfaction (while noticing in this Report the prin- 

 cipal contributions to acrolitic science during the past year, notable additions 

 to which were made in our own country) in being able to refer. These 

 useful Lecture Notes contain in a few condensed and readily accessible pages 

 the mature results of almost numberless scattered treatises and memoirs ; 

 and besides the certain basis of instruction which they olTer on the ordinary 

 features of composition , structure, and typical characters of meteorites, and 

 of the circumstances which attend their fall, a store of useful hints and germs 

 of fixture theories are thrown out regarding the extra-terrestrial conditions of 

 rock-formation on distant astronomical bodies from which these strange frag- 

 ments are derived. In connexion with the discoveries (and especially with 

 the views advanced by Mr. Lockyer to explain them) of the spectroscope 

 regarding the selective arrangement and definite elevations of certain ele- 

 ments forming the ordinary ingredients of terrestrial rocks in the outer layers 

 of the sun's atmosphere, the low degree of oxidation which invariably cha- 

 racterizes the constituent minerals of meteorites appears, among the conjec- 

 tures to which Professor Maskelyne draws attention, no longer to be a singular 

 peculiarity of the parent bodies from which they were projected, but a condition 

 of their surfaces which corresponds exactly with the common assumption of 

 their small dimensions, usually regarded as a necessary supposition to account 

 for the projection and liberation of aerolites from the attraction of those 

 distant spheres by forces of ordinary eruptive violence. Such views of the 

 arrangeinent and concentration of the elements by gravity in condensing cos- 

 mical masses, tending, in the order of superposition of their densities, to eli- 

 minate as much oxygen and other light-atomed elements as they contain 

 towards the surfaces, if, as appears very probable, they should soon be con- 

 firmed by a more perfectly discriminating scrutiny of the sun's atmosphere 

 with the spectroscope, will link together more closely than before the evidence 

 which the spectroscope affords, and which has independently been gathered 



* ' Nature,' vol. xii. pp. 485, 504, 520 (September 30 and October 7, 14, 1875). 



