THE PROBABILITY OF LARGE METEORITES BAVING 
FALLEN UPON THE EARTH 
PROFESSOR Es He. SCHWARZ VAGRIC:S.) EG.S. 
Rhodes University College, Grahamstown, Cape Colony 
From time to time the accumulation of new facts in any one science 
renders it necessary to examine into the cause for the existence of 
certain features, and to see whether some small points which rendered 
the earlier explanations not altogether satisfactory, may not be 
entirely accounted for in the light of the new experience. In many 
cases this proceeding has resulted in the entire recasting of our ideas 
concerning certain phenomena, especially in the physical sciences 
where laboratory demonstration can prove the truth of the new law; 
in geology, the unwieldy nature of the subject-matter, and the dif- 
ferent aspects which the same country or mountain may present to 
different observers, renders this method somewhat unsatisfactory. 
It must, however, be done, if the science is to progress, although in the 
end a categorical statement that the new explanation is a true one, 
and the old one a false one, cannot be made. It is the purpose of this 
paper to pick out certain facts in connection with the amygdaloidal 
lavas of Prieska, Cape Colony, which cannot readily be explained 
on any of the theories of igneous extrusion, and to see whether they 
cannot be accounted for on some other theory; I shall summarise 
what is known of the fall of large meteorites and point out in what 
way the phenomena connected with these show certain significant 
resemblances to those exhibited by the amygdaloids of Prieska, 
tentatively suggesting that in the past huge bolides fell on the earth, 
melted the rocks in the neighborhood of the fall and produced these 
great fields of lava. 
The meteorites that we examine in the collections of museums 
are small and would not by their fall make much impression on the 
earth: it is true that in the course of ages these small meteorites must 
add considerably to the bulk of the earth for it is estimated that 
some hundred thousands, if not some millions, of meteoric bodies 
fall upon the earth each day. Even these museum-specimen meteor- 
124 
