98 On Meteorites. 
year, on an average, are recorded; and in but comparatively few 
instances the fallen stones are hunted up by people in order that 
they may become of use to science. ‘The meteorites, therefore, 
owing to their variety, rank among the most precious treasures of 
the mineralogical museums. To illustrate the value generally 
attached to them, it may be mentioned that after it had become 
known that the meteorite found last year at Tysnæs, Western Nor- 
way, had been acquired by the Christiania Museum, a mineralogist 
was dispatched by the Riks-museum, in Stockholm, Sweden, the 
long way across the Scandinavian Peninsula, in the hope that he 
might be able to pick up some fragments. 
A chief ‘object of this paper is, therefore, to call the attention of 
the public to the meteorites, in order to prevent possible falls from 
being passed unheeded. The attention once aroused, it may also be 
possible to ferret out meteorites, the fall of which, in former times, 
has been kept a secret, owing to the superstition that, reduced to 
a powder, they might serve as a medicine for man and beast. In 
Norway, for instance, they were known as “thorelo”—i.e., “lo,” 
or wadding of Thor, or thunder—the belief being that they fell 
during thunderstorms. Not all the stones which have been pre 
served as “thorelo,” however, are meteorites by any means, many — 
- of them being only common pebbles, pieces of pyrites, or some other _ 
kind of mineral. ’ - 
After these preliminary remarks, I shall proceed to the special — 
subject of this paper—the meteorites and their nature—to be treated ‘ 
of in three separate sections, viz. :— a 
(1) The phenomena accompanying the fall of meteorites ; (2) a 
Their mineralogical nature, and (3) Their position as celestial — 
bodies. 7 
The circumstances under which the fall of meteorites occur being 
rather similar in most instances, we may take, for an example, a 
fall of the Tysnæs meteorite. It occurred on the 20th of May, f 
1886, near the farm called Midt Vaage, situated on the Island of ft 
Tysnæs, south of Bergen, Norway. Between eight and nipe 
o’clock in the evening the inhabitants in a wide circle of surround- : | 
ing country were frightened by a loud report, which most of them — 
took for a clap of thunder, the stone falling down immediately after 7 
the report. I have myself examined two grown-up persons who 
witnessed the meteorite coming down from the air. One was? 
woman working in a potato-field. She heard a loud noise, and, 
