METEORITES. Till the beginning of the 19th century, the fall of stones from the sky, aerosider ites, aerosiderolites, and aerolites, seemed an eVeut so strange, that neither • scientific men nor the mass of the people could be brought to credit its possibility. Such falls are, indeed, recorded by the early writers of many nations, Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, .and .Roman ; but the witnesses of these events had been in general laughed at for their delusions. The oldest undoubted sky-stone at present known is that which, though after the Revolution in France removed for a time to the library at Colmar, is once more suspended by a chain from the vault of the choir of the parish church of Ensisheim in Elsass.
The famous mass known as the Pallas-iron, weighing 1500 lbs., of which the greater part is now in the museum at St. Petersburg, was met with at ICrasnojarsk by the traveller Pallas in the year 1772, and had been found on the surface of Mount Kemirs, between Krasnojarsk and Abekansk in Siberia, in the midst of schistose mountains : it was regarded by the Tartars as a holy thing fallen from heaven. The interior is composed of a ductile iron, which, though brittle at high temperature, can be forged either cold or at a moderate heat.
At 8 o'clock on the evening of December 19, 1798, many stones fell at Krakhut, 14 miles from I3enares, in India (S. 150) ; the sky was perfectly serene, not a cloud having been seen since Decem ber 11, and none being seen for many days after. According to the observations of several Europeans, as well as natives, in different parts of the country, the fall of the stones was preceded by the appear ance of a ball of fire, lasting for only a few instants, and accompanied by an explosion resembling thunder. After an explosion are generally heard
sounds which have been variously likened to the flapping of the wings of wild geese, to the bellowing of oxen, to the roaring of a fire in a chimney, to the noiso of a carriage on the pave ment, and to the tearing of calico ; these sounds are probably duo to the rush of the fragments through the air in the neighbourhood of the observers. Sometimes the fragments reach the ground before the sound of explosion is heard, proving that the break-up has taken place while the velocity of the meteorite was considerably higher than that of the sound vibrations (1100 feet a second).
As to the nature of the matter of which these meteorites are composed, about 24, and those the most common, of the 64 elements at present recog nised as constituents of the earth's crust, have been met with, while no new element has been dis covered. The most frequent are iron, magnesium, silicon, oxygen, and sulphur ; next follow alu minium, calcium, nickel, carbon, and phosphorus; while in smaller quantity occur hydrogen, nitrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, titanium, chromium, manganese, cobalt, copper, arsenic, antimony, tin, and chlorine. All of these are met with in the combined state, but some, among which may be mentioned iron, carbon, and sulphur, are present also in the elementary condition.
There is no record as to where all that have fallen in India have been placed. The stones which fell at Parnallce in 1857 were lodged in the Government Central Museum, Madras, and the Muddoor stone of 1865 was placed in the Mysore Museum.