THE ORGUEIL METEOR. 361 



weigliing in all 20 pounds ! Yet, small as they may be, they bring us lessons 

 of a varied and precious kind. Coming to us from the heavens, they bring us 

 the matter ■which revolves among the stars, and of which probably these are 

 composed ; they tell us that, even in the most remote spaces, (he material world 

 is built of the identical materials that we find on our earth; the method by 

 which M. Kircher has been able to analyse the sun has been much, and very 

 justly admired, but it is only just to call attention to the fact that in the 

 meteorites we find the metals which compose that luminary, and that besides we 

 there meet with carbon, chlorine and ammonia, which escape the analysis of the 

 spectrum. 



If, by a concurrence of circumstances unhappily but little probable, one of 

 these stones were to fall at the feet of a philosopher prepared to examine it on 

 the spot, it would reveal to him another mystery. It is known that the temper- 

 ature diminishes as we rise above the ground, and that it must be very low in 

 the celestial spaces, but we are altogether ignorant of the degree of depression ; 

 this we might learn from the aerolites. Some of these being almost entirely com- 

 posed of iron, are good conductors of heat, and the enormous heat which melts 

 their surface may be propagated into the interior of this mass so that they reach 

 the ground as red-hot balls, from which no conclusion can be drawn. But this 

 is not the case with such aerolites as are of an earthy composition ; these 

 transmit the heat through their mass only slowly ; their exterior surface alone 

 may be heated during the short interval of their passage through the air, and the 

 cold which they retain in the centre would return to the surface after the fall. 

 It was in fact observed that the stones which recently fell in the Punjaub froze 

 the hands of the persons who lifted them. Now it is this temperature of the 

 centre of large meteoric masses which it would be so desirable to measure, for it 

 is that of the celestial spaces from whence they set out to reach our earth. 



My object has been to describe results which are acknowledged by science in 

 earnest; may I be permitted to indicate in one word some fantastic notions 

 which are cherished by the vulgar but repudiated by scientific men ? Some 

 persons have done shooting stars the honor to affirm that they preside over the 

 changes of weather, or at least that they enable such to be foreseen ; they are 

 driven to appeal to these as a last resort after having vainly invoked all the 

 constellations of the sky, the planets, the moon and the comets. The Academy, 

 on being consulted, answered that such an influence was not proven — a polite 

 reply ! On the other side, MM. Heis and Secchi, the acknowledged astronomers, 

 whose competency is undeniable, declare that such indication,—- given by those 

 celestial corpuscles, is absolutely false. The public will do well to be on their 

 guard against these inexact predictions which are as often contradicted as con- 

 firmed by the event. "With this reservation, everybody may encourage M. 

 Coulyier Gravier to persevere in the study he has begun of shooting stars, and 

 even to publish liis observations, for it may well happen that a scientific dis- 

 cussion will draw from them grave results, which they probably involve but 

 which he has not been able to find in them. 



J. B. 0. 



