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One of the largest meteorites on record was that which fell near Agram in 1751; it weighed about forty kilogrammes, and was deposited and catalogued in the court mineralogical museum at Vienna.

"Which hypothesis do you believe?" "There may be some truth in both," replied Gazen. "The two processes might even go on together. What if meteorites are simply frozen nebula? It is certain that the earth is still growing a little from the fall of meteoric stones, and that part of the sun's heat comes from meteoric fuel. Most of it, however, arises from the shrinkage of his bulk.

Not at all! They are meteorites!" answered Bennie, entirely engrossed in the scientific phase of the matter and forgetting that he did not speak the other's language. "Space is jammed full of meteoric dust. The larger particles, which strike our atmosphere and which ignite by friction, form shooting stars.

He approached the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.

If it was a startling and, indeed, incredible thing that the particles along a comet's tail should have got round in four days from the first to the second position of the tail considered above, it is as startling and incredible that a mighty layer of meteorites should have shifted bodily in the way required by the sea-bird theory.

That iron should have been one of the last of the metals to come into general use, is partly accounted for by the circumstance that iron, though one of the most generally diffused of minerals, never presents itself in a natural state, except in meteorites; and that to recognise its ores, and then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands the exercise of no small amount of observation and invention.

Father Carbonelle has, moreover, shown that meteorites, if explosion-products of the earth or moon, should, with rare exceptions, follow just the kind of paths assigned to them, from data of observation, by Professor Newton.

He examined the specimen chemically, and soon after announced to the scientific world that the Canyon Diablo Meteorite contained black and transparent diamonds. Since this revelation the search for diamonds in meteorites has occupied the attention of chemists all over the world. "Here, then, we have absolute proof of the truth of the meteoric theory.

Nothing of value was found in the hole dug, but some of the workmen in their leisure hours found on the surface two large meteorites weighing one hundred and one hundred and fifty pounds respectively, besides a number of smaller fragments. The Meteorite Mountain is in a class by itself and is, in a way, as great a curiosity as is the Grand Canon.

A body falling from an infinite distance that is, impelled only by the attraction of gravitation would strike the earth with a velocity of only six or seven miles a second, while the meteorites come at the rate of twenty to thirty miles a second, the earth's rate of revolution being nineteen miles in the same time.