Aerolites with Low Velocities. 123 



AEEOLITES WITH LOW VELOCITIES. 



The following is a translation of the principal passages of a 

 letter by M. L. Scemann, in Comptes Rendus, 4th January, 

 1864:— 



" I have the honour to present to the Academy the largest 

 fragment that was picked up of two aerolites which fell on the 

 7th December last at Tourinnes-la-Grosse, nine leagues south 

 of Louvain in Belgium. The desire to obtain good specimens 

 for the scientific collections of Paris, caused me to visit the spot 

 immediately after the event. The periodical Les Mondes pub- 

 lished in its number for the 20th December, statements col- 

 lected from ocular witnesses of the fall, and which differ little 

 from similar relations. The largest stone was seen to shatter 

 itself on the pavement of the village. Fragments were collected 

 and carried off by different persons, but the greater part was 

 reduced to dust and lost. The second stone was found two 

 days afterwards in a fir- wood about two kilometres from the 

 village. It is from this aerolite I obtained the two large pieces 

 which I place before the Academy ; the remainder, which was 

 twice as big, seems to have been destroyed by persons who 

 wished to see its inside. Both stones are exactly ahke, except 

 that some spots of rust soil the fragments of the first, which 

 were exposed to the dampness of the earth before they were 

 picked up. The clean stone is whitish-grey, of a fine close 

 texture. Its density is 3*52, and disseminated through it are 

 very small metallic grains, some of a fine silver- white, attracted 

 by the magnet, and others, more numerous, of a bronze colour, 

 not magnetic, but soluble in hydrochloric acid, with disengage- 

 ment of sulphuretted hydrogen — characters indicating metallic 

 iron and sulphuret of iron. The stony matter was slightly 

 fusible, and readily attacked by hydrochloric acid. Scattered 

 through it were rare globules of a brown substance easily iso- 

 lated by soaking the stone in concentrated hydrochloric acid. 

 When separated, these globules fuse with great difficulty into 

 a black enamel, while the acid exhibits the green tint charac- 

 teristic of nickel." 



Mr. Soemann then states that the facts relating to these 

 Belgian aerolites suggest observations analogous to those he 

 made with reference to the fall which took place at Ormes in 

 October, 1857. Aerolites have been supposed to arrivo with 

 planetary velocity within the earth's sphere of attraction, and he 

 refers to the efforts that have been made to compute the heating 

 effect of an arrestation of their motion by the resistance of our 

 atmosphere, and states that Bunscn and. Bronn in tho Neues 

 Jahrbuch der Mineralogie, 1857, ^>, 265, calculate that tho com- 



