METEORITES, AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 
395 
far distant regions of space from which they have been con- 
veyed. At one of the Sectional meetings, a few days later, Sir 
William Thomson made these observations the text of a further 
communication on the now well-worn subject. He desired to 
limit the discussion to the bare dry question, Was life possible 
on -a meteorite ? The hypothesis which was to explain the 
bringing of life to our earth did not pretend to explain the 
origin of life, and he would not attempt to offer an explanation 
of the origin of life. The three questions which presented 
themselves were these : Was life possible on a meteorite mov- 
ing in space ? Was life possible on a meteorite while falling to 
the earth’s surface ? and, Could any germs live after the me- 
teorite had become imbedded in the earth ? A meteorite may 
be exposed to great heat before it reaches the earth ; whether 
or not life on that meteorite would be destroyed by that heat 
was dependent on the duration of exposure. If a meteorite 
traversed space with the same side always exposed to the sun 
that side would be strongly heated, the other would be cold ; 
if it spun round at a uniform rate all its surface would be of 
one uniform temperature ; and if it rotated once per hour it 
would have a high temperature on one side and be as cold as 
ice on the other. The whole or part of the surface of a me- 
teorite might afford a climate suitable to some living forms, 
destructive to others. When the moss-covered stone enters the 
atmosphere the germs upon its surface would be torn off long 
before the stone became heated, and in a few years they may 
settle down on the earth, take root, and grow. But were the 
germs of the exterior destroyed by heat, there might still be 
vegetable life in the interior. The time occupied by a stone 
in its passage through the air would not be more than twenty 
or thirty seconds at the outside, so that the crust might be 
fused, while the interior might have a moderate temperature, 
and anything alive in it would fall to the earth alive. Sir 
William Thomson concluded by remarking that after the 
collision of cosmical masses fragments must be shot off, some 
of which must certainly carry away living things not destroyed 
by the shock of the collision, and he did not hesitate to main- 
tain, as a not improbable supposition, that at some time or 
other we should have growing on this earth a plant of meteoric 
origin. At this particular stage of the debate (so we are 
informed by “ The Western Morning Hews”) some one attend- 
ing the meeting of the Section introduced the Colorado Beetle, 
and this was held to be irresistibly funny ; then someone 
else got up and said he was an Irishman, which was judged 
to be even funnier still. At length another speaker arose to 
breathe the hope that when Papa Colorado Beetle dropped 
down on a meteorite he would leave Mamma Colorado Beetle 
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