STONES FALLING FROM THE AIR® 
23 ® 
have been occupied with this department of research, may 
have exhausted every thing which relates to erudition on this 
subject, it appears, at least, that they have been unacquainted 
with the various opinions which have lately been made public 
in order to explain the formation of aerolites. Several Ger- 
man writers have, in fact, adopted an hypothesis on the subject 
of these meteors, which the French natural philosophers have 
not given an account of, either because the writings which con- 
tain this opinion*, have not come to their knowledge, or that 
the German language is but little cultivated. My present obser- 
vations have no other object than to repair this slight omission 5 
and in mentioning the hypothesis admitted by certain German 
writers, we cannot avoid referring, in some degree, to the work 
which M. Bigot de Morogues has recently published on the 
same subject. 
We may reduce to three principal hypotheses all those which Hypotheses to 
have been advanced, in order to explain the production of aero- account ^ or 
1 r railing stones, 
lites. Some ascribe to them an extra atmospheric origin, 
and others, on the contrary, consider them as formed in our 
atmosphere j and others have been of opinion, that aerolites 
have their origin in the earth. But all these explanations will 
require to be again subdivided accordingly as the formation of 
the aerolites are ascribed to one or other of these causes. Thus, 
amongst the philosophers who have given these stones an extra 
atmospheric origin, we find — 1st. That some, and among them Thatthey 
Pliny, suppose them to come from the sun, from which he come from the 
deduces their black colour, or rather their appearance of having sun ’ 
been burned (calore adusto.) 
2d. That others, agreeing with Chladni, consider them as t h at t h ey are 
small insulated planets, or rather with M. Lagrange, as frag- planets ; 
mentsof small planets. 
3. Lastly, some with the illustrious author of the Mecanique ^ they 
Celeste, are of opinion, they are bodies projected from the from the moon 
moon, which notion has been adopted by the greatest part of 
the English philosophers. 
* Journal de Physique de Schweiger, torn. V. 
Those 
