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AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. XXII. FEBRUARY, 1888. No. 264. 
ON METEORITES.’ 
BY DR. HANS REUSCH. 
Wt know that in the organic world, besides the larger animals 
and plants, there exist immense numbers of living beings of 
diminutive size, from those barely visible to the unaided eye down 
to those which can only be discerned in powerful microscopes, and 
of which many thousands live in a space no larger than a drop of 
water. Similar is the case with the heavenly orbs revolving in the 
infinite space. Besides the big luminaries, numerous swarms of 
very small bodies are hurrying through the space in their different 
varying orbits. To the smallest of these—the so-called meteorites 
'—I here wish to call your attention. There is a circumstance 
which imparts them with a special interest to us; for they some- 
times fall to the earth, so that we are able to lay hold of them, 
touch them with our hands, study them chemically and microscopi- 
cally—in short, examine them by all the means available to us for 
a scientific investigation of their nature. The meteorites thus form 
a kind of connecting link between astronomy "and mineralogy— 
sciences otherwise rather distant, but which in this instance are 
brought to mutually throw light upon each other. 
It is probable that, on an average, several meteorites reach the 
earth every day, but many falls occur at night, while others drop 
into the sea, are lost in deserts or in places inhabited by ignorant 
people. ta going over the falls of meteorites which have come to 
our knowledge, it appears that no more than four or five cases a 
1 A lecture delivered at the University of Christiania, Norway. 
