546 Description and Analysis of a large mass of [Nov. 



find a copy of Bongainville's voyage, and to consult Boussingault'swork, 

 if they give any description of the forms of the masses noticed by them ; 

 and it is one of the great difficulties which all colonial research labours 

 under, that we are either wholly deprived of references or can find only 

 the brief and abridged notices to which scientific periodicals are neces- 

 sarily limited, and which for some part of the matter in hand are wholly 

 insufficient for our purpose. 



Since this was written I find in the Quarterly Journal of Science, 

 Vol. 12 for 1822, p. 330, an account of some meteoric stones, one of 

 which fell in Courland, on the banks of the Kolupschen Lake in the 

 presence of some labourers, and was hot enough to burn their hands 

 when they touched it. It is said to have penetrated a foot and a half 

 into a dense dry clayey loam, and that its shape when entire resembled 

 a rounded anvil, of which the narrow end was undermost. This is 

 not very explicit, but it serves to show that there may be a tendency to 

 these elongated anvil-like forms either with or without a foot. The 

 Chinese give all manner of fantastic names to the stones recorded in 

 their annals to have fallen from the heavens, of which some it is known 

 are iron, such as " anvils, hammers, nails, hatchets, &c." and our own 

 name of thunderbolt and the German Donneraxt (Thunder-axej seem 

 related to this sort of popular record of these phenomena. 



I put any classical conjecture with diffidence, but a curious question 

 arises here. Is this falling of a^mY-shaped masses from heaven (in the 

 case of our Indian specimen, and the Brasilian and Courland ones too, 

 they are of iron) the parent source of the myth of the Lemnian Vulcan's 

 being hurled from heaven by Jupiter on the island of Lemnos ? where 

 the anvil-God was " received" by the Sintians ? as described by Homer, 

 Book I. 1. 593. 



Kainreffov eV Arifivca bxiyos Sen 6vfxbs lvy\v, 

 "EvBa. fx4 'Sii'Tie? &v8pes &<pap KOfiicrauro ireff6v7 a. 



Literally, 



" Till upon Lemnos I fell, and but little of breath was remaining, 

 When of the Sintian men I was received, atmy falling." 



The paraphrase of Pope being inexact I do not quote it. The little 

 of breath (evfxb s life, soul, ardour, &c.) may well be understood as the 

 mythic amplification of the original fact that the Vulcan (the meteoro- 

 lite) was nearly cold when he reached the ground and was approached ; 



