28 The Origin of the 



Humboldt mentions in his " Cosmos " the ancient 

 record of a fall of meteoric gold. He also mentions 

 an earthy aerolite of Alais in the Department du 

 Gard, which broke up in water, and those of Jonzac 

 and Juvenas, which contained no metallic iron but 

 a mixture of oryctognostically distinct crystalline 

 components, which had led miueralogists to sepa- 

 rate these cosmical masses into two classes, namely, 

 those containing nickeliferous meteoric iron, and 

 those consisting of fine or coarsely granular me- 

 teoric dust. 9 Latterly meteorites consisting of carbon 

 have been found ; and of these there are some spe- 

 cimens in the British Museum, presented by Sir John 

 W. F. Herschel in 1845, which fell at Bockeveldt, 

 Cape of Good Hope, on the 13th of October, 1838, 

 and others by the same and Mr. Maclear, the Astro- 

 nomer-Boyal at the Cape, and by Mr. Charlesworth 

 in 1839 ; and from Montauban in the Department 

 of the Tarn and Garonne in France, on the 14th of 

 May, 1864. There is also in the Museum at Dover a 

 mass of carbon which was found in the chalk in 

 making the Sibertswold tunnel, which I do not doubt 

 is meteoric. It is of a very cindery and friable nature. 

 Many meteors leave long trains of burning matter, 

 like sparks, behind them. Is it improbable that these 

 are carbon ? These things are all in harmony with 

 the fact that every substance now upon the globe 

 must have come to it from exterior space ; in 

 other words, must be from a meteoric source, 

 according to the accepted nebular theory of geo- 

 logists and astronomers, though the former seem 

 not fully to have adverted to the consequences of 



or how otherwise such, balls should be found in the heart of a cliff 

 of pure white chalk. 



9 " Cosmos," vol. i. pp. 118—120. Ed. Bohn, 1849. 



