94 Meteoric Stones. 



of other planetary bodies, and of their Ukeness or unhkeness to 

 those of the earth. I have communicated in a paper addressed 

 to the Royal Academy of Science,* examinations of various me- 

 teoric stones, undertaken with the design of studying them as 

 mineral species, and of thereby enabling myself to determine of 

 what different minerals they are composed. The occasion of the 

 investigation was afforded by the friendly commission which 

 Reichenbach of Blansko gave me to examine the com.position of 

 a meteoric stone, whose glancing apparition within the atmos- 

 phere of the earth, on the 25th of November, 1833, about 6 o'clock 

 in the evening, he himself had witnessed, and of which, with 

 very great expense and labor, he finally succeeded in collecting 

 the scattered fragments in the region about Blansko. The me- 

 teoric stones which I examined, have fallen near Blansko in 

 Moravia, Chantonnay in France, Lautolax in Finland, Alais in 

 France, and Ellenbogen in Bohemia, and I have also analyzed the 

 meteoric iron made known by Pallas from the region between Ab- 

 ekansk and Krasnojarsk in Siberia. From the analyses referred 

 to, I believe I have discovered that the meteoric stones are mine- 

 rals ; as it is absurd to suppose that minerals can be formed in the 

 air out of the elements of the air, they cannot be atmospheric pro- 

 ducts, and the less so, as many of them present cavities, which are 

 filled with a mineral of another color and probably of a different 

 composition, which it were a plain absurdity to consider as being 

 possibly formed in them during the few moments the attraction 

 of the earth would suffer so heavy a body to remain in the atmos- 

 phere. They become such elsewhere. They are not cast out 

 from the volcanos of the earth, for they fall everywhere, not 

 merely nor oftenest in the near or remote neighborhood of a vol- 

 cano ; their external appearance is unlike a terrestrial mineral, 

 unlike any thing which the volcanos eject. Their containing 

 unoxidized malleable iron, proves that water is not found, and 

 perhaps, not air, in their former abode. They must, therefore, 

 come from some other planet, which has volcanos. The one 

 nearest us is the moon, and the moon has gigantic volcanos com- 

 pared with the earth. The moon has no atmosphere to retard 

 the volcanic projectiles. Collections of water do not appear to 

 exist on it, in A word, among the probable sources, the moon is 



* Kongl. Vetensk. Acad. Handl. 1334, p. 115, 



