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.
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