Meteorites and What they Teach us. — Hensoldt. 37 
trial globe, whether as a constituent of rocks or in the shape 
of veins, lodes, crystals or loose masses. It was invariably 
found oxydized or combined with carbon, silica, sulphur and 
other substances from which it had to be first separated by 
more or less complicated processes. But metallic iron was 
met with in the meteorites Avhich have from time to time fall- 
en upon the surface of our planet. These mysterious visitors 
from other spheres not only often contain iron but they are in 
the majority of cases almost entirely composed of it and it is 
more than probable that the first iron with which man became 
acquainted and which he used for tools and implements, was 
the iron of meteorites. 
When Cortez had completed the conquest of Mexico, the 
Spaniards, among a great many other peculiar and extraor- 
dinary observations which they made in that remarkable 
country were particularly struck and puzzled by one fact. They 
noticed that the Aztecs possessed certain implements, such as 
knives, daggers, etc., made of iron, but it seemed that only the 
most distinguished of the natives possessed such, that iron 
was a great rarity and was prized higher than gold. At first the 
Spaniards believed that the Aztecs extracted the metal in some 
crude fashion from its ore, which abounded in many parts of 
the country, but they soon ascertained that this was not the 
case'. They found that not a single smelting furnace existed 
in the empire and their surprise was not small when they 
learned that the Aztecs were totally unacquainted with any 
method of extracting the iron from the ore, which indeed 
they had never suspected of any kinship with the highly val- 
ued metal. The question whence the Axtecs had procured the 
little iron they possessed became a perplexing problem to the 
Spaniards, a problem which they were never able to solve. The 
natives do not seem to have enlightened them much on the 
subject, for when asked, they mysteriously pointed to the sky 
and indicated that they obtained their iron from the regions 
above. Such assertions no doubt the Spaniards received with 
an incredulous smile and they concluded that the Aztecs pro- 
cured it by way of traffic from some other, perhaps more civilized 
nation, which they suspected to exist and kept looking for, 
North and South for more than a hundred years. It was left 
to modern science to unravel the mystery. The Aztecs were 
quite correct, the iron of which they had made tlieir imple- 
