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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1131 



precedent long established in France. When- 

 ever a professorship falls vacant there in one 

 of the national universities, or the director- 

 ship of an observatory, or a similar post, the 

 Academy of Sciences is asked to recommend 

 a first and second choice to the proper officer 

 — as the minister of public instruction. Our 

 executives will never surrender a wide lati- 

 tude of choice, but President Wilson has set 

 a good example. So, too, his action in asking 

 the academy to study the slides at Panama, 

 and to form a body which should bring all the 

 research agencies of the country into a posi- 

 tion to cooperate with each other and the gov- 

 ernment in time of need, indicates a praise- 

 worthy intention to heighten the prestige of 

 the academy. — New York Evening Post. / 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Meteorites, Their Structure, Composition and 

 Terrestrial Relations. By Oliver Cumhings 

 Farrington, Ph.D., Curator of Geology, 

 Field Museum, Chicago. Published by the 

 author. 



The mystery attendant upon the fall of a 

 stone-like or metallic body upon our earth 

 from the " realms of space " early attracted the 

 attention of students of natural phenomena 

 and aroused the curiosity and perhaps super- 

 stition of the uneducated. Singularly enough, 

 however, the literature upon so fascinating a 

 subject has, so far as the English-reading lay- 

 man is concerned, for a long time been very 

 unsatisfactory, consisting mainly of brief 

 papers descriptive of individual occurrences, or 

 catalogues of collections. The well-known 

 books of Kirkwood and Lockyer treat the sub- 

 ject mainly from an astronomical standpoint. 

 Fletcher's "Introduction to the Study of 

 Meteorites," a British Museum publication, 

 has been by far the most satisfactory treatise, 

 but is scarcely known outside of the libraries 

 of the specialist. In other languages we have 

 Meunier's handbooks and treatises based on 

 the collections of the Paris Museum, Brezina's 

 on those of Vienna, and lastly Cohen's compre- 

 hensive " Meteoritenkunde," a work altogether 

 too detailed and technical for the general 

 reader. The book of Dr. Farrington, here 



under review, comes, therefore, opportunely 

 into a field where there is plenty of room. In 

 an octavo volume of 225 pages is given as fully 

 as space will permit, a summation of present 

 knowledge regarding Meteorites, their struc- 

 ture, composition and terrestrial relations. 

 The leading chapters deal with the phenomena 

 and time of falls, the size and form of indi- 

 vidual meteorites, their structural features, 

 chemical and mineralogical composition, origin 

 and classification, with a final chapter on the 

 principal public collections. From this last it 

 appears that the collections of the British 

 Museum, those of Vienna and Paris abroad, 

 and of the Field Museum in Chicago, com- 

 prise each representatives of some 600 out of 

 the known 634 falls and finds, the rapid growth 

 of the last named collection being due to the 

 acquisition of the Ward-Coonley collection 

 in 1912. The national collections at Wash- 

 ington, numbered, as shown by a recent 

 " Handbook and Descriptive Catalogue," 412 

 falls and finds (since increased to some 432), 

 including the recently acquired " Shepard 

 Collection." This wide distribution of the 

 material from individual falls is worthy of 

 more than passing notice. Prior to the eight- 

 eenth century, it seems such objects were 

 rarely preserved in museums, or if so pre- 

 served, were hidden away, the custodians fear- 

 ing to make themselves ridiculous by even 

 acquiescing in their supposed ultra-terrestrial 

 origin, and it was not until the publication of 

 the works of Chladni in 1794 and 1819 that 

 their accumulation for study began upon a 

 truly scientific basis. 



The earliest known undoubted meteorites 

 still preserved are those of Elbogen, Bohemia, 

 and Ensisheim, Upper Alsace, Germany, 

 dating back to 1400 and 1492. These have 

 been broken up and scattered throughout pub- 

 lic and private museums the world over, 

 Wulfing's catalogue showing that fragments of 

 the Ensisheim stone are to be found in 66 

 different collections. It is sometimes ques- 

 tionable if the almost fanatic desire on the 

 part of private collectors to secure fragments, 

 however small, has not retarded rather than 

 helped the cause, since it has not merely re- 



