56 Trof. Maskclyuc and Dr. Lang's Miner ahgical Notes, 



taneous, \vc might further assume that they fell with a diverg- 

 iug flight; for the Qutahar Bazar and Piprassi points are 

 considerably further asunder than those of the Bulloah and 

 Chireya falls. In fact, a line passing from the E.S.E. to W.N.W. 

 would represent the direction of the flight of the aerolite ; and 

 if we are to judge by the different divergences of the stones, that 

 flight would not have been at a great inclination to the horizon. 



Had it been quite horizontal, the point of divergence would 

 have been, on this view, about seven miles E.S.E of the central 

 point of the fall, and two miles N.TV. of Mudbuni. As, how- 

 ever, it w T ould seem to have fallen from a considerable elevation, 

 it may have been much further off, though the point of disrup- 

 tion would have been somewhere nearly vertical over the position 

 thus indicated. 



But this fall is remarkable for the evidence it affords of the 

 incrustation of an aerolite subsequently to its disruption, as 

 well as of the probability of successive disruptions, of w r hich 

 one, at least, was not followed by incrustation. In the great 

 Parnallee aerolite, and still more in that which fell at Bustee, 

 we have cases, of w r hich indeed every collection must exhibit 

 some more or less evident examples, showing crusts on different 

 parts of an aerolite that seem not to have been contemporaneous — 

 where, in fact, the crust on one part has not the thickness and 

 homogeneity that characterizes that on another part. The follow- 

 ing, in the British Museum collection, are cases inpoint: Stannern, 

 Bokkeveldt, Benares, l'Aigle, and Mezo-Madaras. These facts 

 are among those we have to explain. On the present occasion 

 they were accompanied, according to every witness, by reports 

 in the air, and by a subsequent roll of thunder. In two cases 

 the distinct reports were three in number. There was a cloud 

 in the sky, out of which the aerolite seemed to descend ; while 

 at Bulloah the stone or stones were seen to fall as a luminous 

 body, w r hich at some part of its path appeared to scintillate in 

 the air. The shell-like form, too, of the united fragments, in 

 suggesting the idea of an internal core or mass from which the 

 external pieces have been severed, recalls to mind the suggestion 

 of Mr. Benjamin Marsh, that the bursting of the meteorite 

 is the result of the expansion produced by heat. If we couple 

 with Mr. Marsh's suggestion the remarkable explanation by 

 H of rath Haidinger of the intense coldness declared to have been 

 exhibited by the Dhurmsala stones after their having fallen 

 quite hot, I believe that suggestion will prove a very fertile 

 one. The coldness of cosmical space must be shared by bodies 

 wandering therein without atmosphere. 



Such a body entering with planetary velocity the terrestrial 

 atmosphere ; is arrested in its course with an abruptness of which 



