Cosmical gelatinous vesicles, similar to the organic 'nostoc' (masses which
have been supposed since the Middle Ages to be connected with shooting
stars), and those pyrites of Sterlitamak, west of the Uralian Mountains,
which are said to have constituted the interior of hailstones,* must both be
classed among the mythical fables of meteorology.
[footnote] *Gustav Rose, 'Reise nach dem Ural', bd. II., s. 202.
Some few a?‘rolites, as those composed of a finely granular tissue of
olivine, augite, and labradorite blended together* (as the meteoric stone
found at Juvenas, in the Department de l'Ard??che, which resembled
dolorite), are the only ones, as Gustav Rose has remarked, which have a more
familiar aspect.
[footnote] *Gustav Rose, in Poggend., 'Ann.', 1825, bd. iv., x. 173-192.
Rammelsberg, 'Erstes Suppl. zum chem. Handw??rterbuche 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.
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