"I have examined the subject, sir," said he, addressing my father, "and am inclined to the opinion that these phenomena are animals revolving in the orbits of space between the heavenly bodies. Occasionally, one of them comes too near the earth, and rushing through our atmosphere with immense velocity, takes fire and explodes!"
"This is rather a new theory, is it not?" said my father. "It appears that these meteoric stones, in whatever country they fall, are composed of the same ingredients: mostly silex, iron, and nickel: these substances would make rather a hard character, if endowed with animal life, and especially with the capacity of rushing through space at the rate of two or three hundred miles a minute, and then exploding?"
"These substances I consider only as the shell of the animal, sir."
"You regard the creature as a huge shell-fish, then?"
"Not necessarily a fish; for the whole order of nature, called Crustacea, has the bones on the outside. In this case of meteors, I suppose them to be covered with some softer substance; for it frequently happens that a jelly-like matter comes down with meteoric stones. This resembles coagulated blood; and thus what is called bloody rain or snow has often fallen over great spaces of country. Now, when the chemists analyze these things—the stones, which I consider the bones; and the jelly, which I consider the fat; and the rain, which I consider the blood—they find them all to consist of the same elements; that is, silex, iron, nickel, &c. None but my animal theory will harmonise all these phenomena, sir."
"But," interposed my father, "consider the enormous size of your aërial monsters. I recollect to have read only a short time since, that in the year 1803, about one o'clock in the afternoon, the inhabitants of several towns of Normandy, in France, heard noises in the sky, like the peals of cannon and musketry, with a long-continued roll of drums. Looking upward, they saw something like a small cloud at an immense elevation, which soon seemed to explode, sending its vapor in all directions. At last a hissing noise was heard, and then stones fell, spreading over a country three miles wide by eight miles long. No less than two thousand pieces were collected, weighing from one ounce to seventeen pounds. That must have been rather a large animal, eight miles long and three miles wide!"
"What is that, sir, in comparison with the earth, which Kepler, the greatest philosopher that ever lived, conceived to be a huge beast?"
"Yes; but did he prove it?"
"He gave good reasons for it, sir. He found very striking analogies between the earth and animal existences: such as the tides, indicating its breathing through vast internal lungs; earthquakes, resembling eructations from the stomach; and volcanoes, suggestive of boils, pimples, and other cutaneous eruptions."
"I think I have seen your theory set to verse."