452 



Marvels of the Universe 



THE OTUMPA METEORITE. 



This Meteorite, which derives its name from the place of its fall, is tin enormous mass of 

 iron weighing 1.400 pounds. 



developed in early 

 types of amphibian and 

 reptile and have been 

 of use to them as they 

 basked on the sand or 

 mud and wished to be 

 aware in some way of 

 what was going on im- 

 mediately above their 

 heads. 



A very interesting 

 group of the extinct 

 reptiles of this order 

 was that known as the 

 Pelycosaurs, in some 

 forms of which the 

 spines of the vertebrae 

 were enormously de- 

 veloped upwards, till 

 they gave to the body 

 the huge shield which 

 is so well shown in my 

 illustration — a photo- 

 graph of the restoration 

 by Herr Pallenberg, ex- 

 hibited in the grounds 

 of Mr 

 park at SteUingen. 



Hagenbeck's 



METEORITES AND AEROLITES 



BY EDWARD A. MARTIN, F.S.S. 



That meteoric stones actually reach our earth from outer space is a fact which everybody now 

 accepts, but we have only to go back a century to find that even scientific people were loth to believe 

 in the possibility of such an occurrence taking place. Those who said that they had seen a meteorite 

 fall were laughed at for being so easily deluded, as it was thought, and this in spite of the fact 

 that from very early times such falls had been seen and recorded. Much superstition had come 

 to be connected with these earl5' falls, and science was not inclined to aid it by recognizing the 

 truth concerning the stones which, as was then thought, had come down from heaven. We alter 

 the term nowadays, and are content to say that they came down from the heavens, including in 

 that term the whole realm of the star-lit sky. An inquiry into certain reported falls which was 

 made early in the last century resulted in the acceptance by Edward Howard of the principle 

 of extra-terrestrial meteorites, and whilst the French philosophers were still discussing the matter 

 a fall, in 1803, of some two or three thousand stones took place at L'Aigle, Orne, and this was 

 followed by an exhaustive report by the physicist Biot, which compelled the whole scientific world 

 to recognize the fact that such stones did actually fall from outer space. 



For the earliest record of a meteorite we have to go to the Chinese, for in some of their early 

 manuscripts it is mentioned that falls have again and again been seen, the earliest of these dating 



