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NATUKAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



300, and affirmiug their credibility. 

 His reasoning made an impression, 

 but still failed to enforce general 

 assent, until in 1803 an event oc- 

 curred which put an end to all 

 skepticism. On the 26th of April 

 in that year, a meteor exploded 

 over the village of L'Aigle in Nor- 

 mady, within 85 miles of Paris; 

 and more than 2,000 fragments, of 

 weights ranging from 20 pounds to 

 a fraction of an ounce, were scat- 

 tered over a region of several miles. 

 The Academy of Sciences sent a 

 special committee to investigate 

 the matter. They collected speci- 

 mens, took the sworn dispositions 

 of those who had witnessed the 

 phenomena, and in their report 

 put the reality of the occurence be- 

 yond. all possible doubt. 



The phenomena which accom- 

 pany the fall of these bodies are 

 much the same as those of the 

 shooting stars, except that they are 

 ordinarily far more brilliant; and 

 observers who are near the path of 

 the meteor usually hear a rushing 

 roar, like that of a heavy railroad 

 train, accentuated by several can- 

 non-like reports which are some- 

 times heard at a distance of a hun- 

 dred miles. At each of these ex- 

 positions, whose cause is only 

 doubtfully explained the meteor 

 changes its course or breaks into 

 fragments. In a few instances, 

 when the fall took place in the day- 

 time, no luminous phenomena 

 were seen, and in one or two cases 

 the fall of very small aerolites has 

 been unaccompanied by noise. 

 Thus, in March, 1859, there was a 

 shower of little stones in Harrison 

 county, Indiana, one of which, about 

 as large as a marble, fell within a 

 few feet of a man and his wife who 

 were standing in their cabin, with 

 no other warning than the tearing 

 of the missile through the leaves 

 of the trees. The character of the 

 stone, and of several others which 

 fell at the same time, removes all 

 doubt as to their meteoric origin. 



There are several instances on 

 record of mischief done by meteors. 

 In 151 1 a monk was killed by one 

 at Crema; in 1650 another monk at 

 Milan; and in 1674 two sailors on 

 a ship in the Baltic. One of the 

 aerolites which fell at Barbotan in 

 1790 broke though the roof of a 

 house and killed a peasant and a 

 bullock. 



When these bodies have fallen 

 among the ignorant and supersti- 

 tious, they have usually been re- 

 garded with great reverence, and 

 become objects of worship. The 

 Palladium of ancient Troy, which 

 by some writers is described as a 



shapless mass, is supposed to have 

 been an aerolite; so also the image 

 of Diana of Ephesus that fell down 

 from Jupiter; and the mysterious 

 black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca. 

 The stone which fell at Parnallee 

 in Southern India, in 1867, was 

 for some time worshipped bv the 

 natives. 



The number of meteoric falls is 

 very considerable, our cabinets 

 now containiug specimens derived 

 from nearly 300 different localities; 

 and if we added the specimens 

 which are supposed to be of metor- 

 ic origin, though the date of their 

 fall is unknown, we must at least 

 double the number. Recalling 

 now how small a portion of all that 

 reach the earth would ever be 

 found, because so much of her sur- 

 face is covered with water, or for- 

 est, or desert, it becomes evident 

 that the total number of such events 

 is to be counted by the thousand 

 in every century. In fact, the sci- 

 entific journals usually contain the 

 notices of some five or six on the 

 average every year. 



Meteorites differ greatly in size. 

 They seldom fall singly; but the 

 mass which enters the atmosphere, 

 chilled to the temperature of inter- 

 planetary space, breaks up, under 

 the action of the sudden and in- 

 tense heat generated by 'the resis- 

 tance of the air, into fragments 

 which, as a rule, seldom exceed 

 150 pounds in weight, while the 

 majority are much smaller, say 

 from 20 pounds to a few ounces. 

 Since, however, the number of 

 fragments is often very great, the 

 total weight of a single meteoric 

 mass sometimes amounts to tons. 

 This seems to have been the case 

 with the shower of stones which 

 fell at Weston, Conn., in 1807, and 

 the more recent fall at New Con- 

 cord, Ohio, in i860. 



The different specimens from the 

 same fall of course always closely 

 resemble each other, being merely 

 fragments of a single mass; but 

 aerolites from different falls differ 

 widely in almost every respect, 

 with however a few marked fea- 

 tures of resemblance. They are 

 always coated with a thin, black, 

 highly magnetic crust formed by 

 superficial fusion, and they invari- 

 ably contain a considerable amount 

 of iron, ranging from 20 to 25 per 

 cent, to more than 90. This may, 

 according to Maskelyne, be broad- 

 ly classified into three divisions: 

 the iron meteorites or siderites; 

 the stony meteorites, or aerolites 

 (air stones) ; and an intermediate 

 class, represented by exceedingly 

 rare specimens, which consist of a 



honeycombed mass of iron filled in 

 with stony matter, and are known 

 as siderolites (steel stones). 



SIDERITES. 



Compared with the aerolites, the 

 siderites are very rare. As yet on- 

 ly five cases are on record in which 

 meteoric iron has been seen to fall; 

 at Agram in Bohemia, in 1751; 

 Dickson county, North Carolina, 

 1835; Brannau, Austria, 1847; Vic- 

 toria, South Africa, 1862; and Mays- 

 ville, California, 1873. A recent 

 fall in Nevada is reported to have 

 consisted of meteoric iron, but the 

 report needs confirmation. While, 

 however, the instances are so few 

 in which the actual fall of iron 

 masses has been observed, we 

 have in our cabinets some 200 

 specimens of native iron, which 

 from the circumstances under which 

 they were found, and their resem- 

 blance to the Agram meteorite in 

 chemical constitution and crystal 

 structure, are pretty certainly con- 

 cluded to be of metoric origin. 

 Such are the great masses from 

 Orange river in the British Museum, 

 the Red River iron from Texas in 

 the Cabinet of Yale College, and 

 the Ainsa iron in the Smithsonian 

 rooms at Washington. A marked 

 peculiarity of all meteoric iron is 

 its alloy with a considerable quan- 

 tity of nickel, varying from 5 to 15 

 per cent. A second characteristic 

 consists in a peculiar crystaline 

 structure, which is best brought 

 out by polishing a cut surface and 

 acting upon it with a weak acid. 

 Quite recently, also, Graham and 

 others have found that a large 

 quantity of hydrogen, and smaller 

 amounts of carbon oxide and other 

 gases, chiefly hydrocarbons, are 

 occluded in the pores of meteoric 

 iron, and can be liberated by heat. 



AEROLITES. 



The aerolites, or stony meteor- 

 ites, which form the vast majority 

 of all that have been seen to fall, 

 differ very widely among them- 

 selves. Some are hard, and com- 

 pact, while others are as friable as 

 rottenstone. The aerolite of Bish- 

 opsville, S. C, though covered 

 with che invarible black crust, is 

 internally almost as white as chalk, 

 and as light as pumice; that of Kold 

 Bolkkeveld, South Africa, on the 

 other hand, resembles a piece of 

 anthracite coal more than anything 

 else; and that of Orgueil, a mass of 

 rather coherent garden soil. The 

 majority, however, are heavy gray- 

 ish rock, something like sandstone, 

 made up of crystals or minute 

 spheres of various peculiar miner- 



