or equal to that of the earth's orbital motion. "This example," says Prof. Newton, "affords the strongest proof that the detonating and stone-producing meteors are phenomena not essentially unlike."
The foregoing list contains but a small proportion even of those meteoric stones the date of whose fall is known. But besides these, other masses have been found so closely similar in structure to aerolites whose descent has been observed, as to leave no doubt in regard to their origin. One of these is a mass of iron and nickel, weighing sixteen hundred and eighty pounds, found by the traveler Pallas, in 1749, at Abakansk, in Siberia. This immense aerolite may be seen in the Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg. On the plain of Otumpa, in Buenos Ayres, is a meteoric mass 7½ feet in length, partly buried in the ground. Its estimated weight is thirty-three thousand six hundred pounds. A specimen of this stone, weighing fourteen hundred pounds, has been removed and deposited in one of the rooms of the British Museum. A similar block, of meteoric origin, weighing twelve or thirteen thousand pounds, was discovered some years since in the Province of Bahia, in Brazil.
Some of the inferences derived from the examination of meteoric stones, and the consideration of the phenomena attending their fall, are the following:
1. R. P. Greg, Esq., of Manchester, England, who has made luminous meteors a special study, has found that meteoric stone-falls occur with greater frequency than usual on or about particular days. He calls attention especially to five aerolite epochs, viz.: February 15th–19th; May 19th; July 26th; November 29th, and December 13th.
2. It is worthy of remark that no new elements have been found in meteoric stones. Humboldt, in his Cosmos, called attention to this interesting fact. "I would ask," he remarks, "why the elementary substances that compose one group of cosmical bodies, or one planetary system, may not in a great measure be identical? Why should we not adopt this view, since we may conjecture that these planetary bodies, like all the larger or smaller agglomerated masses revolving round the sun, have been thrown off from the once far more expanded solar atmosphere, and have been formed from vaporous rings describing their orbits round the central body?"[13]
3. But while aerolites contain no elements but such as are found in the earth's crust, the manner in which these elements are combined and arranged is so peculiar that a skillful mineralogist will readily distinguish them from terrestrial substances.
4. Of the eighteen or nineteen elements hitherto observed in meteoric stones, iron is found in the greatest abundance. The specific gravities vary from 1·94 to 7·901: the former being that of the stone of Alais, the latter, that of the meteorite of Wayne County, Ohio, described by Professor J. L. Smith in Silliman's Journal for November, 1864, p. 385. In most cases, however, the specific gravity is about 3 or 4.
5. The contemplation of the heavenly bodies has often produced in thoughtful minds an intense desire to know something of their nature and physical constitution. This curiosity is gratified in the examination of aerolites. To handle, weigh, inspect, and analyze bodies that have wandered unnumbered ages through the planetary spaces—perhaps approaching in their perihelia within a comparatively short distance of the solar surface, and again receding in their aphelia to the limits of the planetary system—must naturally excite a train of pleasurable emotions.
6. It is highly probable that in pre-historic times, before the solar system had reached its present stage of maturity, those chaotic wanderers were more numerous in the vicinity of the earth's orbit than in recent epochs. Even now the interior planets, Mercury and Venus, appear to be moving through the masses of matter which constitute the zodiacal light. It would seem probable, therefore, that they are receiving from this source much greater accretions of matter than the earth.