20 Anniversary Address 



Victoria, and which look very much like the ends of mining picks 

 but cannot be such, first from their composition, and secondly 

 from the fact that they have been found in wash dirt freshly dug 

 up from spots where no mining tool was ever before used. I 

 have a large specimen of this metal from Weary Creek, near 

 Carabobila, found there long before gold began to be 

 worked. 



As I have elsewhere stated, on good authority, all the mineral 

 matters known to have fallen from the sky are common to earthly 

 products, and of no other than minerals and metals known to be 

 also terrestrial are they composed. In this way nickel, iron tin, 

 copper, lead, chloride of soda, potash, ammonia, sulphur, gypsum, 

 lime, graphite, chrysolite, feldspar, phosphate of lime, magnetic 

 pyrites, olivine, and other substances common to earthly volcanos, 

 and in one instance a peaty carbonaceous substance, have occurr- 

 ed in stones known to have fallen, and the records of which are 

 in existence. 



Now if, as before mentioned, hydrogen, sodium, and magnesium 

 (and, according to Kirchof, iron, calcium, chromium, &c.) exist 

 in the sun, so may the minerals enumerated exist in other 

 parts of the solar system and be carried with the meteors through 

 space, to be dropped on the surface of the earth when their 

 orbits are near enough to each other. There is but one other 

 conclusion to which we can come, viz., that if these bodies that 

 have so fallen do not come from beyond the earth's orbit, they 

 must come from the earth itself, haviugbeen first volatilised here ; 

 and this is the argument I used many years ago respecting the 

 sulphate of lime, like that of "Wielicska, which fell in Poland 

 daring a thunderstorm near "Widdin in 182S. 



Supposing that the former supposition is correct, then we 

 should arrive at the conclusion that there are other bodies iu the 

 solar system constructed of similar materials to those of the earth, 

 a conclusion quite iu agreement Avith the statement that the same 

 Divine Author "created the heavens and the earth," which (as 

 the record adds parenthetically to embrace other systems, "He 

 made the stars also'") must be taken to mean the solar system, in 

 which the same law of motion and the same principle of gravita- 

 tion regulate all its parts. 



