PREFACE. 
In all ages meteoric stones have fallen on the earth. Many of 
them were found by persons who were in search of them; they pre- 
served them, and thus collections were made in private rarity cabinets 
and in natural history cabinets. Many learned persons believed in 
meteoric stones, but many others were sceptical, and their attacks 
were so violent, and their mockery about stones that fell from the 
atmosphere, or were thrown by the men in the Moon to the inhab- 
itants of the Earth, so sharp as to shake the belief of many a 
collector, and the happy possessor, fearing the mockery of the so- 
called learned men, concealed his treasures, or threw them away on 
the dust-hill, or in a ditch. 
But at last there appeared a firm believer in aerolites, named 
CHLADNI, who took the trouble to collect all accounts concerning ob- 
servations of meteoric stones from the ancient times up to the nine- 
teenth century. He showed 1. The immense number of facts. 2. The 
strikingly concurrent testimony in all the accounts independent of one 
another. 
In the year 1829 he published his work “Ueber Feuermeteore’”’ 
(i. e. on Meteoric Stones) in Vienna, and from that moment the eyes 
of unbelievers were opened. Meteoric stones were again found, and 
