28 Meteorites and What they Teach us. — Hensoldt. 
neer, but now editor of the Altoona Daily Times, had several 
years ago claimed the existence of a "fault" in the Tipton 
Run region, and the consequent identity of the coal found 
there with the lower coals of Clearfield and Cambria Cos. 
This opinion was elaborated ten years ago in the Tyrone 
Herald (with which Mr. Scott was then connected), and con- 
sequently to him belongs the credit of having first determined 
the true age of the Tipton coal, though, as already stated, the 
writer was not aware of Mr. Scott's work until after he had 
arrived at the same conclusion. 
Mr. Scott claims to have traced the line of "fault" 
through from the Clearfield region to, Tipton run, but the 
writer has no personal knowledge as to the particular form of 
disturbance that has dropped the lower Coal Measures down 
out of their regular place in the Tipton region. Whether it be 
a genuine "fault," or a deep local syncline, separated from the 
coal area west and north of it by erosion, or any other form of 
displacement, has not been determined for lack of time and a 
good map of the region. 
METEORITES AND WHAT THEY TEACH US. 
By H. Hensoldt, Ph. D. 
Assistant in Naturiil History, School of Mines, Columbia College, New York. 
The nebular hypothesis of the great Laplace, which very in- 
geniously accounts for the origin of what we call heavenly 
bodies by assuming that the materials now composing them, 
say the elements, were at one time distributed in a gaseous 
state through space, throughout vast and theoretically, infi- 
nite space, that our present worlds are the outcome of an elab- 
orate condensation process which these originally rarefied ma- 
terials underwent, the accounting for planets or satellites trav- 
elling around a central body by assuming that they owe their 
origin to a ring or a succession of rings thrown off by this cen- 
tral body, from its equatorial region, in consequence of the 
centrifugal force getting the better of the centripetal — this 
wonderful nebular hypothesis has been recently and is even 
now in danger of being superseded by another, not quite so 
•'sublime" if I may use this word, though grand enough in 
some of its aspects, but one which, if it appeals less to our im- 
agination is more capable of verification by direct observation 
and which apparently carries a far greater degree of probability. 
