Rammelsberg, 'Erstes Suppl. zum chem. Handwörterbuche der Mineralogie',
1843, s. 102. "It is," says the clear-minded observer Olbers, "a remarkable
but hitherto unregarded fact, that while shells are found in secondary and
tertiary formations, no 'fossil meteoric stones' have as yet been
discovered. May we conclude from this circumstance that previous to the
present and last modification of the earth's surface no meteoric stones fell
on it, although at the present time it appears probable, from the researches
of Schreibers, that 700 fall annually?" (Olbers, in Schum., 'Jahrb.', 1838,
s. 329.) Problematical nickelliferous masses of native iron have been found
in Northern Asia (at the gold-washing establishment at Petropawlowsk, eighty
miles southeast of Kusnezk), imbedded thirty-one feet in the ground, and
more recently in the Western Carpathians (the mountain chain of Magura, at
Szlanicz), both of which are remarkably like meteoric stones. Compart
Erman, 'Archiv für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland', bd. i., s. 315,
and Haidinger, 'Bericht über Szlaniczer Schürfe in Ungarn.'
These bodiescontain, for instance, crystalline substances, perfectly similar
to those of our earth's crust; and in the Siberian mass of meteoric iron
investigated by Pallas, the olivine only differs from common olivine by the
absence of nickel, which is replaced by the oxyd of tin.*
[footnote] *Berzelius, 'Jahresber.', bd. xv., s. 217 und 231. Rammelsberg,
'Handwörterb., abth. ii., s. 25-28.
As meteoric olivine, like our basalt, contains from 47 to 49 per cent. of
magnesia, constituting, according to Berzelius, almost the half of the
earthy components of meteoric stones, we can not be surprised at the great
quantity of silicate of magnesia found in these cosmical bodies. If the
zërolite of Juvenas contain separable crystals of augite and labradorite,
the numerical relation of the constituents
p 132
render it at least probable that the meteoric masses of Chateau-Renard may
be a compound of diorite, consisting of hornblende and albite, and those of
Blansko and Chantonnay compounds of hornblende and labradorite. The proofs
of the telluric and atmospheric origin of aUerolites, which it is attempted
to base upon the oryctognostic analogies presented by these bodies, do not
appear to me to possess any great weight.
Recalling to mind the remarkable interview between Newton and Conduit at
Kensington,* I would ask why the elementary substances that compose one
group of cosmical bodies, or one planetary system, may not, in a great
measure, be identical?
[footnote] * "Sir Isaac Newton said he took all the planets to be composed
of the same matter with the Earth, viz., earth, water, and stone, but
variously connected." -- Turner, 'Collections for the History of Grantham,
containing authentic Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton', p. 172.
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 been formed from vaporous rintgs describing
their orbits round the central body? We are not, it appears to me, more
justified in applying the term telluric to the nickel and iron, the olivine
and pyroxene (augite), found in meteoric stones, than in indicating the
German plants which I found beyond the Obi as European species of the flora
of Northern Asia. If the elementary substances composing a group of
cosmical bodies of different magnitudes be identical, why should they not
likewise, in obeying the laws of mutual attraction, blend together under
definite relations of mixture, composing the white glittring snow and ice in
the polar zones of the planet Mars, or constituting in the smaller cosmical
masses mineral bodies inclosing crystals of olivine, augite, and
labradorite? Even in the domain of pure conjecture we should not suffer
ourselves to be led away by unphilosophical and arbitrary views devoid of
the support of inductive reasoning.
Remarkable obscurations of the sun's disk, during which the stars have been
seen at mid-day (as, for instance, in the obscuration of 1547, which
continued for three days, and occurred about the time of the eventful battle
of Mühlberg), can not be explained as arising from volcanic ashes or mists,
and were regarded by Kepler as owing either to a 'materia cometica', or to a
black cloud formed by the sooty exhalations of the solar body. The shorter
obscurations of 1090 and 1203, which continued, the one only three, and the
other six
p 133
hours, were supposed by Chladni and Schnurrer to be occasioned by the
passage of meteoric masses before the sun's disk. Since the period that
streams of meteoric shooting stars were first considered with reference to
the direction of their orbit as a closed ring, the epochs of these
mysterious celestial phenomena have been observed to present a remarkable
connection with the regular recurrence of swarms of shooting stars Adolph
Erman has evinced great acuteness of mind in his accurate investigation of
the facts hitherto observed on this subject, and his researches have enabled
him to discover the connection of the sun's conjunction with the August
asteroids on the 7th of February, and with the November asteroids on the
12th of May, the latter period corresponding with the days of
St. Mamert (May 11th), St. Pancras (May 12th), and St. Servatius (May 13th),
which according to popular belief, were accounted "cold days."*
[footnote] Adolph Erman, in Poggend., 'Annalen', 1839, bd. xlviii., s.
582-601. Biot had previously thrown doubt regarding the probability of the
November stream reappearing in the beginning of May ('Comptes Rendus', 1836,
t. ii., p. 670). Mädler has examined the mean depression of temperature on
the three ill-named days of May by Berlin observations for eighty-six years
('Verhandl. des Vereins zur Bedförd, des Gartenbaues', 1834, s. 377), and
found a retrogression of temperature amounting to 2.2 degrees Fahr. from the
11th to the 13th of May, a period at which nearly the most rapid advance of
heat takes place. It is much to be desired that this phenomenon of
depressed temperature, which some have felt inclined to attribute to the
melting of the ice in the northeast of Europe, should be also investigated
in very remote spots, as in America, or in the southern hemisphere. (Comp.
'Bull. de l'Acad. Imp. de St. Pétersbourg', 1843, t. i., No. 4.)
The Greek natural philosophers, who were but little disposed to pursue
observations, but evinced inexhaustible fergility of imagination in giving
the most various interpretation of half-perceived facts, have, however, left
some hypotheses regarding shooting stars and meteoric stones which
strikingly accord with the views now almost universally admitted of the
cosmical process of these phenomena. "Falling stars," says Plutarch, in his
life of Lysander,* are, according to the opinion of some physicists, not
eruptions of the ethereal fire extinguished in the air immediately after its
ignition, nor yet an inflammatory combustion of the air, which is dissolved
in large quantities in the upper regions of space, but these meteors are
rather a fall of celestial bodies, which, in consequence of a certain
intermission in the rotatory force, and by the impulse of some irregular
movements, have been hurled down not only to the inhabited portions of the
Earth, but also beyond it into the great ocean, where we can not find them."
[footnote] *Plut., 'Vitæ par, in Lysandro', cap. 22. The statement of
Damachos (Daïmachos), that for seventy days continuously there was a fiery
cloud seen in the sky, emitting sparks like falling stars, and which then,
sinking nearer to the earth, let fall the stone of Ægos Potamos, "which,
however, was only a small part of it," is extremely improbable, since the
direction and velocity of the fire-cloud would in that case of necessity
have to remain for so many days the same as those of the earth; and this, in
the fire-ball of the 19th of July, 1686, described by Halley ('Trans.', vol.
xxix., p. 163), lasted only a few minutes. It is not altogether certain
whether Daïmachos, the writer, [Greek words], was the same person as
Daïmachos of Platæa, who was sent by Selencus to India to the son of
Androcottos, and who ws charged by Strabo with being "a speaker of lies" (p.
70, Casaub.). From another passage of Plutarch ('Compar. Solonis c. Cop.',
cap. 5) we should almost believe that he was. At all events, we have here
only the evidence of a very late author, who wrote a century and a half
after the fall of aërolites occurred in Thrace, and whose authenticity is
also doubted by Plutarch.
Diogenes of Apollonia* expresses himself still more explicitly.
[footnote] *Stob., ed. Heeren, i., 25, p. 508; Plut., 'de plac. Philos.',
ii., 13.
According to his views, "Stars that are 'invisible', and, consequently, have
no name, move in space together with those that are visible. These
invisible stars frequently fall burning at Ægos Potamos." The Apollonian,
who held all other stellar bodies, when luminous, to be of a pumice-like
nature, probably grounded his opinions regarding shooting stars and meteoric
masses on the doctrine of Anaxagoras the Clazomenian, who regarded all the
bodies in the universe "as fragments of rocks, which the fiery ether, in the
force of its gyratory motion, had torn from the Earth and converted into
stars." In the Ionian school, therefore, according to the testimony
transmitted to us in the views of Diogenes of Apollonia, aërolites and
stars were ranged in one and the same class; both, when considered with
reference to their primary origin, being equally telluric, this being
understood only so far as the Earth was then regarded as a central body,*
p 135
forming all things around it in the same manner was we, according to our
present views, suppose the planets of our system to have originated in the
expanded atmosphere of another central body, the Sun.
[footnote] *The remarkable passage in Plut., 'de plac. Philos.', ii., 13,
runs thus: "Anaxagoras teaches that the surrounding ether is a fiety
substance, which, by the power of its rotation, tears rocks from the earth,
inflames them, and converts them into stars." Applying an ancient fable to
illustrate a physical dogma, the Clazomenian appears to have ascribed the
fall of the Nemæan Lion to the Peloponnesus from the Moon to such a
rotatory or centrifugal force. (Ælian., xii., 7; Plut., 'de Facie in Orge
Lunæ' c. 24; Schol. ex Cod. Paris., in 'Apoll. Argon.', lib. i., p. 498,
ed. Schaef., t. ii., p. 40; Meineke, 'Annal. Alex.', 1843, p. 85.) Here,
instead of stones from the Moon, we have an animal from the Moon! According
to an acute remark of Böckh, the ancient mythology of the Nemæan lunar
lion has an astronomical origin, and is symbolically connected in chronology
with the cycle of intercalation of the lunar year, with the moon-worship at
Nemæa, and the games by which it was accompanied.
These views must not, therefore, be confounded with what is commonly termed
the telluric or atmospheric origin of meteoric stones, nor yet with the
singular opinion of Aristotle, which supposed the enormous mass of Ægos
Potamos to have been raised by a hurricane. That rrogant spirit of
incredulity, which rejects facts without attempting to investigate them, is
in some cases almost more injurious than an unquestioning credulity. Both
are alike detrimental to the force of investigation. Notwithstanding that
for more than two thousand years the annals of different nations had
recorded falls of meteoric stones, many of which had been attested beyond
all doubt by the evidence of irreproachable eye-witnesses -- notwithstanding
the important part enacted by the Bætylia in the meteor-worship of the
ancients -- notwithstanding the fact of the companions of Cortez having see
an aërolite at Cholula which had fallen on the neighboring pyramid --
notwithstanding that califs and Mongolian chiefs had caused swords to be
forged from recently-fallen meteoric stones -- nay, notwithstanding that
several persons had been struck dead by stones falling from heaven, as for
instance, a monk at Crema on the 4th of September, 1511, another monk at
Milan in 1650, and two Swedish sailors on board ship in 1674, yet this great
cosmical phenomenon remained almost wholly unheeded, and its intimate
connection drawn to the subject by Chladni, who had already gained immortal
renown by his discovery of the sound-figures. He who is penetrated with a
sense of this mysterious connection, and whose mind is open to deep
impressions of nature, will feel himself moved by the deepest and most
solemn emotion at the sight of every star that shoots across the vault of
heaven, no less than at the glorious spectacle of meteoric swarms in the
November phenomenon or on St. Lawrence's day. Here motion is suddenly
revealed in the midst of nocturnal rest. The still radiance of the vault of
heaven is for a moment animated with life and movement. In the mild
radiance left on the track of the shooting star, imagination pictures the
lengthened path of the meteor through the vault of heaven,
p 136
while, every where around, the luminous asteroids proclaim the existence of
one common material universe.
If we compare the volume of the innermost of Saturn's satellites, or that of
Ceres, with the immense volume of the Sun, all relations of magnitude vanish
from our minds. The extinction of suddenly resplendent stars in Cassiopeia,
Cygnus, and Serpentarius have already led to the assumption of other and
non-luminous cosmical bodies. We now know that the meteoric asteroids,
spherically agglomerated into small masses, revolve round the Sun,
intersect, like comets, the orbits of the luminous larger planets, and
become ignited either in the vicinity of our atmosphere or in its upper
strata.
The only media by which we are brought in connection with other planetary
bodies, and with all portions of the universe beyond our atmosphere, are
light and heat (the latter of which can scarcely be separated from the
former),* and those mysterious powers of attraction exercised by remote
masses, according to the quantity of their constituents, upon our globe, the
ocean, and the strata of our atmosphere.
[footnote' *The following remarkable passage on the radiation of heat from
the fixed stars, and on their low combustion and vitality -- one of Kepler's
many aspirations -- occurs in the 'Paralipom. in Vitell. Astron.
parsOpticqa', 1604, Propos. xxxii., p. 25: "Luciis proprium est calor,
sydera omnia calefaciunt. De syderum luce claritatis ratio testatur,
calorem universorum in minori esse proportione ad calorem unius solis, quam
ut ab homine, cujus est certa caloris mensura, utrque simul percipi et
judicari possit. De cincindularum lucula tenuissima negare non potes, quin
cum calore sit. Vivunt enim et moventur, hoc auten non sine calefactione
perficitur. Sic neque putrescentium lignorum lux sui calore destituitur;
nam ipsa puetredo quidam lentus ignis est. Inest et stirpibus suus calor."
(Compare Kepler, 'Epit. Astron. Copernicanæ', 1618, t. i., lib. i., p. 35.)
Another and different kind of cosmical, or, rather, material mode of contact
is, however, opened to us, if we admit falling stars and meteoric stones to
be planetary asteroids. They not only act upon us merely from a distance by
the excitement of luminous or calorific vibrations, or in obedience to the
laws of mutual attraction, but they acquire an actual material existence for
us, reaching our atmosphere from the remoter regions of universal space, and
remaining on the earth itself. Meteoric stones are the only means by which
we can be brought in possible contact with that which is foreign to our own
planet. Accustomed to gain our knowledge of what is not telluric solely
through measurement, calculations, and the deductions of reason, we
experience a sentiment of astonishment at finding that we may examine,
weigh, and analyze bodies that appertain
p 137
to the outer world. This awakens, by the power of the imagination, a
meditative, spiritual train of thought, where the untutored mind perceives
only scintillations of light in the firmament, and sees in the blackened
stone that falls from the exploded cloud nothing beyond the rough product of
a powerful natural force.
Although the asteroid-swarms, on which we have been led, from special
predilection, to dwell somewhat at length, approximate to a certain degree,
in their inconsiderable mass and the diversity of their orbits, to comets,
they present this essential difference from the latter bodies, that our
knowledge of their existence is almost entirely limited to the moment of
their destruction, that is, to the period when, drawn within the sphere of
the Earth's attraction they become luminous and ignite.
In order to complete our view of all that we have learned to consider as
appertaining to our solar system, which now, since the discovery of the
small planets, of the interior comets of short revolutions, and of the
meteoric asteroids, is so rich and complicated in its form, it remains for
us to speak of the ring of Zodiacal light, to which we have already alluded.
Those who have lived for many years in the zone of palms must retain a
pleasing impression of the mild radiance with which the zodiacal light,
shooting pyramidally upward, illumines a part of the uniform length of
tropical nights. I have seen it shine with an intensity of light equal to
the milky way in Sagittarius, and that not only in the rare and dry
atmosphere of the summits of the Andes, at an elevation of from thirteen to
fifteen thousand feet, but even on the boundless grassy plains, the Illanos
of Venezuela, and on the sea-shore, beneath the ever-clear sky of Cumana.
This phenomenon was often rendered especially beautiful by the passage of
light, fleecy clouds, which stood out in picturesque and bold relief from
the luminous back-ground. A notice of this aërial spectacle is contained
in a passage in my journal, while I was on the voyage from Lima to the
western coasts of Mexico: "For three or four nights (between 10ºdegrees
and 14ºdegrees north latitude) the zodiacal light has appeared in greater
splendor than I have ever observed it. The transparency of the atmosphere
must be remarkably great in this part of the Southern Ocean, to judge by the
radiance of the stars and nebulous spots. From the 14th to the 19th of
March a regular interval of three quarters of an hour occurred between the
disappearance of the sun's disk in the ocean and the first manifestation of
the zodiacal
p 138
light, although the night was already perfectly dark. an hour after sunset
it was seen in great briliancy between Aldebaran and the Pleiades; and on
the 18th of March it attained an altitude of 39ºdegrees5'minutes. Narrow
elongated clouds are scattered over the beautiful deep azure of the distant
horizon, flitting past the zodiacal light as before a golden curtain. Above
these, other clouds are from time to time reflecting the most brightly
variegated colors. It seems a second sunset. On this side of the vault of
heaven the lightness of the night appears to increase almost as much as at
the first quarter of the moon. Toward 10 o'clock the zodiacal light
generally becomes very faint in this part of the Southern Ocean, and at
midnight I have scarcely been able to trace a vestige of it. On the 16th of
March, when most strongly luminous a faint reflection was visible in the
east." In our gloomy so-called "temperate" northern zone, the zodiacal
light is only distinctly visible in the beginning of Spring, after the
evening twilight, in the western part of the sky, and at the close of
Autumn, before the dawn of day, above the eastern horizon.
It is difficult to understand how so striking a natural phenomenon should
have failed to attract the attention of physicists and astronomers until the
middle of the seventeenth century, or how it could have escaped the
observation of the Atabian natural philosophers in ancient Bactria, on the
euphrates, and in the south of Spain. Almost equal surprise is excited by
the tardiness of observation of the nebulous spots in Andromeda and Orion,
first described by Simon Marius and Huygens. The earliest explicit
descriptions of the zodiacal light occurs in Childrey's 'Britannia
Baconica',* in the year 1661.
p 139
[footnote] *"There is another thing which I recommend to the observation of
mathematical men, which is that in February, and for a little before and a
little after that month (as I have observed several years together), about
six in the evening, when the twilight hath almost deserted the horizon, you
shall see a plainly discernible way of the twilight striking up toward the
Pleiades, and seeming almost to touch them. It is so observed any clear
night, but it is best illac nocte. There is no such way to be observed at
any other time of the year (that I can perceive), nor any other way at that
time to be perceived darting up elsewhere; and I believe it hath been, and
will be constantly visible at that time of the year; but what the cause of
it in nature should be, I can not yet imagine, but leave it to future
inquiry." (Childrey, 'Britannia Baconica', 1661, p. 183.) This is the
first view and a simple description of the phenomenon. (Cassini,
'Découverte de la Lumi dfd éleste qui paroît dans le Zodiaque', in the
'Mém. de l'Acad.', t. viii., 1730, p 276. Mairan, 'TraitéPhys de l'Aurore
Boréale', 1754, 0. 16.) In this remarkable work by Childrey there are to
be found (p. 91) very clear accounts of the epochs of maxima and minima
diurnal and annual temperatures, and of the retardation of the extremes of
the effects in meteorological processes. It is, however, to be regretted
that our Baconian-philosophy-loving author, who was Lord Henry Somerset's
chaplain, fell into the same error as Bernardin de St. Pierre, and regarded
the Earth as elongated at the poles (see p. 148). At the first he believes
that the Earth was spherical, but supposes that the uninterrupted and
increasing addition of layers of ice at both poles has changed its figure;
and that as the ice is formed from water, the quantity of that liquid is
every where diminishing.
The first observation of the phenomenon may have been made two or three
years prior to this period; but, notwithstanding, the merit of having (in
the spring of 1683) been the first to investigate the phenomenon in all its
relations in space is incontestably due to Dominicus Cassini. The light
which he saw at Bologna in 1668, and which was observed at the same time in
Persia by the celebrated traveler Chardin (the court astrologers of Ispahan
called this light, which had never before been observed, 'nyzek', a small
lance), was not the zodiacal light, as has often been asserted,* but the
p 140
enormous tail of a comet, whose head was concealed in the vapory mist of the
horizon, and which, from its length and appearance, presented much
similarity to the great comet of 1843.