s AMERICAN MUSEUM GUIDE LEAFLETS 



L'Aigle which was hoard over an area seventy five miles in diameter 

 directly after a swiftly moving lire-hall had been seen to pass through 

 the air. The explosion, or series of explosions, was immediately fol- 

 lowed by the fall of two or three thousand stones within an elliptical 



area about <> j miles long and '2\ miles wide. The largest of the stones 

 weighed 20 pounds, the next largest •'>! pounds, but most of the frag- 

 ments were very small. The occurrence at L'Aigle proved the correct- 

 ness of another of Chladni's theories, which was that " Hre halls " in the 

 sky were nothing more or less than meteorites in flight. 



The oldest still existing meteorite of the fall of which we have an 

 exact record is that of Ensisheim, in Elsass, Germany. 1 An ancient 

 document states: 



'*()n the sixteenth of November, 1492, a singular miracle happened: 

 for between 11 and 12 in the forenoon, with a loud crash of thunder and a 

 prolonged noise heard afar oil', there fell in the town of Ensisheim a stone 

 weighing 2(>() pounds. It was seen hv a child to strike the ground in a field 

 near the canton called Gisguad, where it made a hole more than five feet 

 deep. It was taken to the church as being a miraculous object. The noise 

 was heard so distinctly at Lucerne, Villing, and many other places, that 

 in each of them it was thought that some houses had fallen. King Maxi- 

 milian, who was then at Ensisheim, had the stone carried to the castle; 

 alter breaking off two pieces, one for the Duke Sigismund of Austria and 

 the other for himself, he forbade further damage, and ordered that the 

 stone he suspended in the parish church." 2 



Within the past century many stones and some masses of iron have 

 been seen to fall from the sky and afterwards have heen collected and 

 are now in cabinets, while several hundred specimens have heen found 

 which are so much like the positively known meteorites that they have 

 heen classed with them and are jealously guarded in collections. 



Classification. 



Meteorites are generally divided into three classes according to their 

 mineral composition: 



I. "Siderites," or iron meteorites, which consist essentially of an 

 alloy of iron and nickel; 



1 A fragment of this meteorite weighing about four ounces (129 grammes) is in 



the general meteorite collection. 



2 Fletcher. An Introduction to the study of Meteorites. I*. 19. 1888. 



