A erolites. 215 
were an aérolite to fall in the midst of a desert, or in a 
thinly-peopled district, it is needless to point out how few 
the chances are of its descent being ever noticed or re- 
corded. That innumerable aérolites do fall without attract- 
ing any attention, is clearly proved by the number of dis- 
coveries, continually taking place, of metallic masses, which 
from their locality and peculiar chemical composition, could 
only be derived from some extra-terrestrial source. The 
great size also of many of these masses entirely precludes 
the possibility of their having been placed by human 
agency in the positions they have been found to occupy— 
sometimes on the surface of the earth, but just as frequently 
buried a few feet in the ground. 
Thus the traveller Pallas found, in 1749, at Abakansk, in 
Siberia, the mass of meteoric iron, weighing 1,680 lbs., now 
in the Imperial Museum, at St. Petersburg. Another, 
lying onthe plain of Tucuman, near Otumpa, in South 
America, has been estimated, by measurement, to weigh no 
less than 33,600 lb., or about 15 tons; and one added last 
year to the splendid collection of meteorites in the British 
Museum, weighs rather more than 34 tons. It was found at 
Cranbourne, near Melbourne, and was purchased by a Mr. 
Bruce, with a view to his presenting it to the British 
Museum, when, through some misunderstanding, it was 
discovered that one-half of it had been already promised to 
the Museum at Melbourne. In order, therefore, to save it 
from any such mutilation, the trustees of our National 
Museum acquired and transferred to the authorities of the 
Melbourne collection a smaller mass which had been sent 
in 1862 to the International Exhibition. It weighed about 
3,000 lb., and had been found near Melbourne in the imme- 
diate vicinity of the great meteorite. The latter was then 
_ forwarded entire to London. In the British Museum may 
also be seen a small fragment of an aérolite, originally 
weighing 191 lb, which from time immemorial had been 
lying at Elbogen, near Carlsbad, in Bohemia, and had 
always borne the legendary appellation of “ Der verwiinschte 
Burggraf, or the enchanted Burgrave. The remainder of 
this mass is preserved in the Imperial collection at Vienna. 
In Great Britain only two meteoric masses (not seen to fall) 
have hitherto been discovered ; one was found about forty 
years ago, near Leadhills, in Scotland; the other in 1861, 
at Newstead, in Roxburghshire. : 
Several instances have at different times occurred, in 
which stones like aérolites have been found, and prized ac- 
