Anniversary Address. 19 



Connected with these meteors is the discovery that several 

 comets revolving in elliptic orbits coincident with the meteoric 

 orbits throughout an entire revolution, have appeared about the 

 time of the meteoi'ic showers ; and the spectroscope, turned upon 

 the light of the comets and that of the meteors, proved them to be 

 identical, and, therefore, to indicate similar composition. Hence 

 it is begun to be believed that there is an intimate relationship 

 between these bodies. But if comets admit through their nuclei 

 the light of a star of the eleventh magnitude, there cannot be 

 very close relationship with heavy mineral masses. Yet a con- 

 nection seems likely to be established between these meteors and 

 showers of meteoric stones. On the 26th April, 1803, a meteor 

 burst pver L'Aigle, in Normandy, and two thousand stones fell 

 on the trees and houses. la May, 1812, 200 fell on an oval area 

 of twenty-four square miles, between Vienna and Prague ; and on 

 14th May, 1861, only five years since, an area of ninety square 

 miles in France was visited in the same manner. In 1866, three 

 years ago, there fell in Hungary on an area of forty square miles 

 a mass weighing 6 cwt., with nearly a thousand smaller stones. 

 On last new year's day, there fell in Upland, in Sweden, a shower 

 of stones, still hot. Some fell on ice, which they penetrated. 



Now, at Dandenong, rather more than twenty miles from Mel- 

 bourne, there lately existed an enormous mass of meteoric iron, 

 which is generally considered to have fallen in a similar manner. 

 And I have recently often been inclined to attribute the existence 

 of the obsidian buttons (of which I gave an account to the Geological 

 Society of London : Q. J. xi. 403, xiii. 188 in 1855 and 1857,) 

 which occur on the surface in various parts of this colony, in 

 Tasmania, and on the plains of Victoria (where- Sir T. Mitchell 

 found one, which was described by Darwin, Volcanic Islands, p. 

 39) to a similar origin; for though they resemble some of the 

 volcanic bombs of the Island of Ascension, yet they often occur 

 here hundreds of miles away from known igneous rocks, on low 

 muddy plains, and in alluvial and gold deposits, the only really 

 volcanic hills being extinct craters in Victoria and South Australia 

 where I have not heard that they have been found at all. 



Not only might I now refer these to a meteoric origin, but 

 also the bits of Native Iron which I have found in almost every 

 gold washing not only in this colony, but in those I visited in 



