Now, the fall of a heated mass, crashing apparently with terrific vio-
lence, whether as a bolt from the blue by day, or a hissing, blazing
meteor by night, is a startling event, even when witnessed in these
newspaper days ; and how much more awe-inspiring and miraculous
would it have appeared in the dark ages of superstition ! It was
inevitable that such falls should have attracted notice from the
very earliest periods of human history,' and the stones, when
recovered, been deemed fit objects of idolatry; like one which
fell in India as recently as August, 1884, whicTi was decked with
flowers and daily anointed with much ceremonial.^ No metal
except iron ever reaches us in this way direct from the sky, and
this fact alone must have invested it with a singular and mystic
interest, before ever its utility to man was perceived. Thus we
find in an age of copper, ornaments and pieces of meteoric iron
placed on the altars of the Turner Mounds of Ohio. Now, some
of the meteorites of native iron — called siderites, to distinguish
them from the stony meteorites — are of such magnitude that they
could not have failed to excite attention, an exceptionally large
mass in the Argentine Republic being said to contain thirty thou-
sand pounds of solid malleable iron, whilst many others found in
America and Australia are several thousand pounds in weight.
