"[108:1]

"These are . . . wandering stars, to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness for ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[108:1] R. A. Proctor, _The Expanse of Heaven_, p. 134.

[Illustration: FALL OF AN AEROLITE.

"There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp." (_see_
p. 116).]

CHAPTER X

METEORS

Great meteorites--"aerolites" as they are called--are like great comets,
chance visitors to our world. Now and then they come, but we cannot
foretell their coming. Such an aerolite exploded some fifteen miles
above Madrid at about 9{h} 29{m}, on the morning of February 10, 1896:--

"A vivid glare of blinding light was followed in 1-1/2 minutes
by a loud report, the concussion being such as not merely to
create a panic, but to break many windows, and in some cases
to shake down partitions. The sky was clear, and the sun
shining brightly, when a white cloud, bordered with red, was
seen rushing from south-west to north-east, leaving behind it
a train of fine white dust. A red-tinted cloud was long
visible in the east."

Many fragments were picked up, and analyzed, and, like other aerolites,
were found to consist of materials already known on the earth. The outer
crust showed the signs of fire,--the meteoric stone had been fused and
ignited by its very rapid rush through the air--but the interior was
entirely unaffected by the heat. The manner in which the elements were
combined is somewhat peculiar to aerolites; the nearest terrestrial
affinity of the minerals aggregated in them, is to be found in the
volcanic products from great depths. Thus aerolites seem to be broken-up
fragments from the interior parts of globes like our own. They do not
come from our own volcanoes, for the velocities with which they entered
our atmosphere prove their cosmical origin. Had our atmosphere not
entangled them, many, circuiting the sun in a parabolic or hyperbolic
curve, would have escaped for ever from our system. The swift motions,
which they had on entering our atmosphere, are considerably greater on
the average than those of comets, and probably their true home is not in
our solar system, but in interstellar space.

The aerolites that reach the surface are not always exploded into very
small fragments, but every now and then quite large masses remain
intact. Most of these are stony; some have bits of iron scattered
through them; others are almost pure i