battle of Agincourt in the "wooden O" of the Elizabethan theatre. There was not the appearance-we question whether there were the reality -of any extraordinary devotion or asceticism. To the world in general, the nonjuring clergy were known only in the secular callings by which they earned their maintenance-Wagstaffe, Deacon, and Cartwright, as medical practitioners, Collier as a laborer for the booksellers, Blackburne and Lindsay as correctors of Bowyer's press. With all their differences from their contemporaries of the church, the nonjurors would probably have been little better able than these to satisfy certain modern requirements. And this leads us to notice the idea, which is, we believe, entertained by a considerable number of persons, that to the exclusion of the nonjurors from the church are to be ascribed the defects of our theology in the following century; that its defectiveness, consequently, is to be regarded as a judgment on the proceedings of 1688. A very well-looking deduction may be traced; about as well-looking, perhaps, as the architectural theory on which Mr. Pugin some years ago founded an amusing volume of caricatures;-the theory that the decline and fall of Gothic art are to be ascribed to the evil influence of the Reformation. We believe, however, that the one is as insufficient as the other; which Mr. Pugin himself has been compelled to abandon, so that the second edition of his "CONTRASTS," is in contrast with the first and with itself. Even in the case of the English Church, exceptions may be taken to both theories. If the Reformation did all the mischief to architecture, how is it that long before that event Gothic art had begun to decline among us? If it was the revolution that brought in the ruin of our theology, how is it that before the revolution there was a powerful latitudinarian school in the church? How is it that English Romanists have been no better architects, or judges of architecture, than English Protestants? How is it that the writings of nonjurors are themselves wanting in spirituality? Other religious communities in these lands were in a state of quiescence during the same period. The older English sectaries were stagnating; Dr. Candlish cannot find words to denounce with sufficient vehemence the lethargy of moderatism" which oppressed the kirk. If we look beyond the seas, Mr. Pugin's old theory must at once give way to facts; art became "paganized" in the Tridentine countries, as well as elsewhere; and so, in the matter of religion, we find the eighteenth century everywhere marked by appearances of torpor; although no kings had been dethroned, no bishops deprived, no distressing oaths tendered or refused. Romanism, Lutheranism,† Calvinism, are all affected at once; nor were the Greek churches in any better condition. Nay, we should anticipate it as probable, that an inquiry into the state of the great religious systems beyond the bounds of Christendom, would discover a similar state of things in them also during the same period. We shall now enter on an attempt to offer a truer and more widely applicable solution than that which has been mentioned; but we have thought it well to state some reasons why this appears to us unsatisfactory. * See the Life of Lady Huntingdon, i., 144, and else where. As to the state of Lutheranism, there is a very remarkable passage in Goethe's Autobiography, book i. (Works, xxiv., 62 ed., 1829.) One thing more we shall venture to observethat the case of the nonjurors may be not unprofitably studied by those among us who are so exclusively sensible of the evil effects of state connection on the church, that they can see little or no compensatory good in it. If, as is continually urged by such persons, the history of our church in the last century proves the banefulness of stateinfluence, what, it may be asked, does the history of the nonjurors prove in favor of freedom from such influence? When we review the high beginning, the altered tone and ground, the division and sub-division, the contentiousness, the unsteadfastness, the fancifulness, the dwindling, the insignificant ending-the thought, we own, comes very forcibly into our minds, that a few acts of parliament, of a nature to prevent a too ready execution of every idea which may enter the heads of speculative or antiquarian divines, may be not altogether an unwholesome restraint. Granting (whether we may rightly do so or not) all that we can be required to grant as to the defectiveness of the Anglican Church in the eighteenth century, granting that it fell grievously short of its professed system, still the system itself remained, to be the mark of later generations, who should better understand its excellences, and more earnestly endeavor to realize it. While the nonjurors were quarrelling and shifting; while the communionoffice of the restoration was superseded by that of King Edward's First Book; while this was next superseded by the new office of 1718, and that in its turn gave way, together with the whole Anglican Prayer-book, to Deacon's out-of-date chimera, the offices of the church providentially remained unaltered. They were in danger in 1689, even from Sancroft and his associates, who were at that time disposed to make changes for the sake of conciliating nonconformists, after the late common resistance to Romanism; this danger was averted by the deprivation. Immediately after, they were in great danger from Burnet and his party, who were deterred from enforcing their very pernicious suggestions by a fear of arming the nonjurors with an argument against them; a fear which would not have been felt, if at that time the nonjurors had themselves been affected with the spirit of change which thirty years later rent their communion asunder. And when, after the manifestation of this spirit, a dread of nonjurors could no longer be a bar to change by divines of the Established Church-when, from the prevalent tone of opinion, any changes which might have been undertaken must necessarily have been very detrimental-we owe the preservation of the book to that suspension of the convocation which is complained of as the most grievous of state-interferences, and to that spirit of quiescence among the clergy, in which a justification is supposed to be found for speaking of our forefathers of the last three or four generations in language which can hardly be becoming towards any who have professed the name of Christ. With a system which has been thus guarded, we may trust that there is of a truth a blessing from above. Our prayer-hook, while it has retained that which it would have been a most serious loss to give up-while it has retained all that is essential, however imperfectly much of this may have been appreciated by some of those through whose hands we have received it-has unquestionably served as a bond of union, where offices such as those of the nonjurors would have been SCIASCONSET-COPPER IN AUSTRALIA-DISEASE AMONG FISH. 229 party of about fifty Nantucket gentleman and ladies. Several of the party went in a sail-boat upon a neighboring pond to take fish. Others walked along the green lanes, and strolled over the pebbly beach. The children took off their shoes and stockings, and let the waves roll up upon their feet; some of the gentlemen sat in the shade of the piazzas, and productive of irreconcileable dissension. And I went to Sciasconset a few day ago, with a those churchmen who would prefer the offices of the usagers to the forms which are authorized among us, may, we think, learn very sufficiently from the history of nonjurorism what is the only true and safe way of endeavoring after the realization of their wishes to any wholesome end. It is not to form or to cause a schism, by insisting on things which churchmen in general are not pre-engaged in conversation with the ladies, while pared to embrace; but to use in a spirit of patience and humility such as we already have; to strive, by wise and assiduous training, that men may be brought to enter into the understanding and the love of these, from which they are, for the most part, as yet sadly far remote; and in such efforts to place the hope of preparing them for something yet better, if it should be God's good pleasure hereafter to vouchsafe it. SCIASCONSET. others tried their skill in a game of ball. At 2 o'clock, we sat down to a most sumptuous dinner, in a hall prepared for the accommodation of large parties. The cool ocean breeze fanned our cheeks, and stimulated our appetites. As evening came on, we buttoned our overcoats around us, and in a long cavalcade of carriages of every description, rode over the verdant fields, with the ocean almost continually in view, to Nantucket. The distance from Nantucket to this unique village is about eight miles. If a person is suffering from extreme heat, debility and loss of appetite, a visit to Sciasconset will be to him almost as life to the dead. The objects of interest upon this island, to most persons, are few. But the climate, in the heat of summer, is surpassingly beautiful. The bracing atmosphere makes you sleepy, and the cool breezes enable you to enjoy the luxury of sleep. The invigorating atmosphere excites your appetite, and you always find upon the table food so temptingly prepared that you can hardly refrain from eating, even without an appetite. At Sciasconset one enjoys all the benefits of a sea-voyage, without the sea-sickness.-N. Y. Evangelist. Ar the eastern extremity of the Island of Nantucket, there is one of the most remarkable watering-places, in this country, and yet but few persons have heard even its name. Leaving New Bedford in the beautiful steamboat Massachusetts, you are carried some sixty miles, in a southeasterly direction, out into the Atlantic Ocean, to the Island of Nantucket. Here you find a large and wealthy town, of from eight to ten thousand inhabitants, and a harbor full of shipping. The island is a large and treeless prairie, raised but a few feet above the level of the ocean, covered with grass, upon which thousands of sheep, and hundreds of cattle are continually grazing. This spacious COPPER IN AUSTRALIA.-British enterprise has plain of verdure is about eighteen miles in length, found a fresh field on which to exercise itself, in and from three to seven in breadth. In many the copper mines of South Australia. We have places it is as level as a floor, and again it swells seen some very fine specimens of the carbonate into gentle undulations like the rolling prairies. of copper, and the grey sulphuret of that metal, The ocean breeze always sweeps this plain, making of an exceedingly rich character, from the KasNantucket, so far as climate is concerned, one of sunda mine. The first discovery was made in the most delightful summer retreats which can be January, 1844-when the copper ore was found imagined. During a residence of two years upon cropping out to the surface; and within twelve this island, I do not remember a single night in months, with but very few men at work, four which the warmth of a blanket was not desirable. hundred tons of ore have been raised. There I have been visiting here during the excessively are, at present, four copper mines at work, and hot weather of this summer, and have twice called three or four producing lead of good quality. for additional clothing for my bed, and have not The country abounds in iron and manganese; and experienced an uncomfortable hour for the heat. some other rarer metals have been found. The Still, the inhabitants of Nantucket feel that in the general character of the stratum in which these heat of summer they must have their country, or are found, is a kind of pipe-clay-the result of rather their ocean retreat. The eastern extremity the decomposition of a variety of clay-slate; conof the island terminates in a bluff, perhaps sixty sequently the labor of excavating is very slight. feet in height. The top of the bluff is a smooth plain of the greenest verdure. Here about a hun- DISEASE AMONGST FISH.A disease has atdred cottages in miniature, Lilliputian cottages, are tacked the pike and eels in the river Barrow, erected, most of them in the most frugal style im- during the present season; both being frequently aginable, and are occupied by the more wealthy found in a dying state on the surface of the water. inhabitants of Nantucket, for six weeks or two The pike seem emaciated; and the inside of the months, in the middle of summer. A few of these mouth presents a fungus ulceration, covering the cottages are costly, and extremely beautiful. They teeth, palate, and tongue-and when the body is would charm the eye with their tasteful appoint- opened, the stomach is filled with a green slimy ments anywhere. Most of these houses seem to be substance. Eels are seen with a little apparent laid directly upon the green grass, and cost from life for a day or so, and afterwards dead in shoal three to five hundred dollars. And this is the fash- water: the under part of the body, from the mouth ionable watering-place, the Saratoga of Nantucket. to the tail, is speckled with blood-red spots, and From this bluff you look down upon the far-extend- the mouth is sometimes full of coagulated blood. ing beach, upon whose white sand the ocean rolls However, the fish do not seem to be in bad conin tireless, and often in most majestic billows. dition, or to have suffered so long as the pike. And far as the eye can reach, extends the illimit-The same kinds of fish in the canal about Monasable ocean. The surf breaking upon this beach, terevan have also suffered from the same malady. after an easterly storm, is often truly terrific. -Leinster Express. From Chambers' Journal. THE Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, so distinguished by his scientific travels in America, has employed his advanced years in writing, under the title of Cosmos, [the world,] a general physical history of the universe; and of this work two parts of an English translation have appeared.* The means of composing an entire view of nature do not exist; science has not as yet made the requisite advances. Much, however, has been ascertained by the wit of busy man, and the effect of a survey of this so far imperfect kind may be likened, Von Humboldt thinks, to that of a landscape viewed from a mountain, where a stranger will praise what he sees, although large tracts of country lie hidden in mist; there being a certain mysterious charm even in the concealment. The fall from these fireballs, and penetrate ten or fifteen feet into the ground-has been shown, among many other instances of the kind, by the well-known fall of aerolites at Barbotan, in the department Des Landes, on the 24th July, 1790; at Lima, on the 16th of June, 1794; at Weston, in Connecticut, on the 14th of December, 1807; and at Juvenas, in the department of Ardèche, on the 15th of June, 1821. Other phenomena connected with the fall of aerolites are those where the masses have descended, shaken, as it were, from the bosom of a small dark cloud, which had formed suddenly in the midst of a clear sky, accompanied with a noise that has been compared to the report of a single piece of artillery. Whole districts of country have occasionally been covered with thousands of fragments of stones, of very dissimilar magnitudes, but like constitution, which had been rained down from a progressive cloud of the kind described. In rarer instances, as in that which occurred at Kleinwenden, not far from Mühlhausen, on the 16th of September, 1843, large aerolites I have fallen amidst a noise like thunder, when the baron does not hide from himself the difficulty of his mighty task, but he nevertheless enters upon it with hopefulness. His general plan may be presumed from one sentence: "We begin," he says, "with the depths of space, and the region sky was clear, and without the formation of any of the farthest nebulæ; we descend step by step cloud. The close affinity between fire-balls and through the stratum of stars to which our solar shooting stars is also shown by the fact of system belongs, and at length set foot on the air-instances having occurred of the former throwing and-sea-surrounded spheroid we inhabit, discussing down stones, though they had scarcely the diamits form, its temperature, and its magnetical ten-eter of the balls that are projected from our firesion, till we reach the LIFE, that, under the stim-works called Roman candles. This happened ulus of light, is evolved upon the surface." In the parts already published, we find the first steps only, but they are the grandest. The masses suspended in space, from astral systems and nebula down to our solar system, are vividly though briefly described. The hypothesis of the formation of spheres from nebulous matter is touched upon. Comets, aerolites, the zodiacal light, are accurately described. The author then descends to the terrestrial sphere, and discusses its various physical phenomeria-the internal temperature, magnetism, and volcanic forces-on all of which subjects we find the latest and amplest intelligence. Perhaps the manner is less exact than the British scientific mind demands; it is, nevertheless, a striking picture of nature as far as it goes. 66 The subject of shooting-stars is almost a new one. It had attracted little attention till a few years ago, when it was at length observed that the chief displays of this phenomenon take place on particular nights of the year. They are now connected with fire-balls and meteoric stones or aerolites, and a curious theory pends with regard to these associated phenomena. They are regarded as small masses moving with planetary velocity in conic sections round the sun, in harmony with the laws of universal gravitation. When these masses," says Von Humboldt, encounter the earth in their course, and, attracted by it, become luminous on the verge of our atmosphere, they frequently let fall stony fragments, heated in a greater or less degree, and covered on their sur 66 face with a black and shining crust." The appearances are beheld on a much grander scale in elevated tropical climes, where the sky excels in clearness. According to our author, "the connexion of meteoric stones with the grander and more bril liant phenomena of fire-balls—that stones actually *Baillière, Regent Street, London. The translation is to fill two volumes, 8vo. notably at Angiers on the 9th of June, 1822." We have still but an imperfect conception of the physical and chemical processes concerned in these phenomena; but their uniformity shows general oric stones revolve already consolidated into dense causes operating in reference to them. "If metemasses, (iess dense, however, than the mean density of the earth,) then must they form very insignificant nuclei to the fire-balls, surrounded by inflammable vapors or gases, from the interior of which they shoot, and which, judging from their height and apparent diameters, must have actual diameters of from 500 to 2600 feet. The largest meteoric masses of which we have information, those, to wit, of Bahia and Otumpa in Chaco, 7 feet in length. The meteoric stone of Aegos which Rubi de Celis has described, are from 7 to Potamos, so celebrated through the whole of antiquity, and which is even mentioned in the Marble-chronicle of Paris, is described as having been of the magnitude of two millstones, and of the weight of a wagon-load. Despite the vain attempts of the African traveller Browne, I have not yet abandoned the hope that this great Thracian meteoric stone, which must be so difficult of destruction, though it fell more that 2300 years ago, will again be discovered by one or other of the numerous Europeans who now perambulate the East in safety. The enormous aerolite which fell in the beginning of the tenth century in the river at Narni, projected a whole ell above the surface of the water, as we are assured by a document lately discovered by Pertz. It is to be observed, however, that none of these aerolites, whether of ancient or modern times, can be regarded as more than principal fragments of the mass which was scattered by the explosion of the fire-ball or murky cloud whence they descended. "When we duly consider the mathematicallyoric stones fall from the outer confines of our determined enormous velocities with which meteatmosphere to the earth, or with which, as fireballs, they speed for long distances through even of the origin of aërolites, in which they were presumed to be projected from still active volcanoes in the moon." the denser fields of air, it seems to me more than improbable that the metalliferous mass, with its internally-disseminated and very perfect crystals of olivine, labrador, and pyroxene, could have run "It is highly probable," continues the Baron, together in so short an interval into a solid nucleus" that a great proportion of these cosmic bodies pass from any state of gas or vapor. The mass that undestroyed in the vicinity of our atmosphere, and falls, besides, even in cases where the chemical only suffer a certain deflection in the eccentricity constitution varies, has always the particular char- of their orbits by the attraction of the earth. We acters of a fragment; it is commonly of a prisma- may conceive that the same bodies only become toidal or irregular pyramidal form, with some-visible to us again after the lapse of several years, what arched surfaces and rounded edges. But and when they have made many revolutions round whence this figure, first observed by Schreibers, their orbit." of a mass detached from a rotating planetary "Shooting stars fall either singly and rarely, body?" The ingenious Chladni was the first and at all seasons indifferently, or in crowds of (1794) to recognize "the connection between fire- many thousands, (Arabian writers compare them balls and the stones that fall from the atmosphere, to swarms of locusts,) in which case they are peas well as the correspondence between the motions riodical, and move in streams generally parallel in of these bodies and those of the planetary masses direction. Among the periodic showers, the most at large. A brilliant confirmation of this view of remarkable are those that occur from the 12th to the cosmic origin of such phenomena has been the 14th of November, and on the 10th of August; supplied by Denison Olmsted, of Newhaven, Mas- the fiery tears' which then descend are noticed sachusetts, in his observations on the showers of in an ancient English church-calendar, and are shooting stars and fire-balls, which made their traditionally indicated as a recurring meteorologiappearance in the night from the 12th to the 13th cal incident. Independently of this, however, preof November, 1833. On this occasion, all these cisely in the night from the 12th to the 13th of bodies proceeded from the same quarter of the November, 1823, according to Klöden, there was heavens-from a point, namely, near the star y seen at Potsdam, and in 1832, over the whole of Leonis, from which they did not deviate, although Europe from Portsmouth to Orenburg on the river the star, in the course of the lengthened observa- Ural, and even in the southern hemisphere, in the tion, changed both its apparent elevation and its Isle of France, a great mixture of shooting stars azimuth. Such ar independence of the rotation and fire-balls of the most different magnitudes; of the earth proclaimed that the luminous bodies but it appears to have been more especially the came from without—from outer space into our enormous fall of shooting stars which Olmsted and atmosphere. According to Encke's calculations Palmer observed in North America between the of the entire series of observations that were made 12th and 13th of November, 1833-when they apin the United States of North America, between peared in one place as thick as flakes of snow, and the parallels of 35° and 42°, the whole of the 240,000 at least were calculated to have fallen in shooting stars came from the point in space towards the course of nine hours-that led to the idea of which the earth was moving at the same epoch. the periodic nature of the phenomenon of great In the subsequent American observations on the flights of shooting stars being connected with parshooting stars of November, 1834 and 1837, and ticular days. Palmer of New Haven recollected the Bremen ones of 1838, the general parallelism the fall of meteors in 1799, which Ellicot and I of their courses, and the direction of the meteors first described, and from which, by the juxtaposifrom the constellation Leo, were perceived. As tion of observations which I had given, it was disin the November periodical recurrence of shooting covered that the phenomenon had occurred simulstars, a more decided parallel and particular direc-taneously over the New-continent from the equation has been noted than in the case of those that appear sporadically at other seasons, so in the August phenomenon it has also been believed that the bodies came for the major part from a point between Perseus and Taurus, the point towards which the earth is tending about the middle of the month of August. This was particularly remarked in the summer of 1839. This peculiarity in the phenomenon of falling stars, the direction of retrograde orbits in the months of November and August, is especially worthy of being either better confirmed or refuted by the most careful observations upon future occasions. "The altitudes at which shooting stars make their appearance, by which must be understood the periods between their becoming visible and their ceasing to be so are extremely various; in a general way, they may be stated as varying between four and thirty-five geographical miles. The relative velocity of the motion is from four and a quarter to nine miles per second; it is therefore equal to that of the planets. Such a velocity of movement, as well as the frequently observed course of shooting stars and fire-balls in a direction the opposite of that of the earth, has been used as a principal element in combating that view tor to New Herrnhut, in Greenland, (N. lat. 64 degrees 14 minutes,) betwixt 46 degrees and 82 degrees of longitude. The identity in point of time was perceived with amazement. The stream, which was seen over the whole vault of heaven between the 12th and 13th of November, 1833, from Jamaica to Boston, (N. lat. 40 degrees 21 minutes,) recurred in 1834, in the night between the 13th and 14th of November, in the United States of North America, but with something less of intensity. In Europe, its periodicity since this epoch has been confirmed with great regularity. "A second even as regularly recurring shower of shooting stars as the November phenomenon, is the one of the month of August-the feast of St. Lawrence phenomenon-between the 9th and the 14th of the month. Muschenbroeck had already called attention, in the middle of the preceding century, to the frequency of meteors in the month of August; but their periodic and certain return about the time of the feast of St. Lawrence was first pointed out by Quetelet, Olbers, and Benzenberg. In the course of time other periodicallyrecurring showers of shooting stars will very certainly be discovered-perhaps from the 22d to the 25th of April; from the 6th to the 12th of Decem ber; and, in consequence of the actual fall of aero- | every region of the earth in which they have been lites described by Capocci, from the 27th to the collected. But so remarkable and early-asserted a physiognomical equality in these dense meteoric masses, is subject to many individual exceptions. How different are the readily-forged masses of iron of Hradschina, in the district of Agram, or that of the banks of the Sisim, in the government of Jeniseisk, which have become celebrated through Pallas, or those which I brought with me from Mexico, all of which contain 96 per cent. of iron, from the aerolites of Siena, which scarcely contain 2 per cent. of this metal, from the earthy meteoric stone of Alais, (Dép du Gard,) which crumbles when put into water, and from those of Jonzac and Juvenas, which, without metallic iron, contain a mixture of oryctognostically distinguishable, crystalline, and distinct constituents! These diversities have led to the division of the cosmical masses into two classes-nickeliferous meteoric iron, and fine or coarse grained meteoric stones. Highly characteristic is the crust, though it be but a few tenths of a line in thickness, often shining like pitch, and occasionally veined. So far as I know, it has only been found wanting in the meteoric stone of Chantonnay, in La Vendée, which, on the other hand-and this is equally rare-exhibits pores and vesicular cavities like the meteblack crust is as sharply separated from the clear gray mass, as is the dark-colored crust or varnish of the white granite blocks which I brought from the cataracts of the Orinoco, and which are also met with by the side of other cataracts in different quarters of the globe-those of the Nile, the Congo, &c. It is impossible to produce anything in the be so distinct from the unaltered matter beneath, as is the crust of the aerolites from their general mass. Some, indeed, will have it that here and there indications of penetration of fragments, as if by kneading, appear; but in general the condition of the mass, the absence of flattening from the fall, and the not very remarkable heat of the meteoric "The different meteor-streams, each of them made up of myriads of little planets, probably intersect the orbit of our earth in the same way as Biela's comet does. Upon this view we may im-oric stone of Juvenas. In every instance, the agine these shoot-star asteroids as forming a closed ring, and pursuing their course in the same particular orbit. The smaller telescopic planets between Mars and Jupiter, with the exception of Pallas, present us, in their closely-connected orbits, with a similar relationship It is impossible as yet to decide whether alterations in the epochs at which the stream becomes visible to us, whe-strongest heat of the porcelain furnace which shall ther retardations of the phenomenon, to which I long ago directed attention, indicate a regular recession or change of the nodes, (the points of intersection of the earth's orbit and the ring,) or whether, from unequal clustering, or very dissimilar distances of the little bodies from each other, the zone is of such considerable breadth, that the earth only passes through it in the course of seve-stone, when touched immediately after its fall, inral days. The lunar system of Saturn likewise shows us a group of most intimately-associated planetary bodies of amazing breadth. In this group, the orbit of the seventh or outermost satellite is of so considerable a diameter, that the earth, in her orbit round the sun, would take three days to pass over a space of like extent. Now, if we suppose that the asteroids are unequally distributed in the course of one of the closed rings which we picture to ourselves as forming the orbits of the periodic currents, that there are but a few thickly-congregated groups, such as would give the idea of continuous streams, we can understand wherefore such brilliant phenomena as those of November, 1799 and 1833 are extremely rare. The acute Olbers was inclined to announce the return of the grand spectacle, in which shooting stars, mixed with fire-balls, should fall like a shower of snow, for the 12th-14th of November, 1867. "The solid, heated, although not red-hot masses which are seen to fall to the earth from fire-balls by night, from small dark clouds by day, accompanied with loud noises, the sky being generally clear at the time, show, on the whole, a very obvious similarity, in point of external form, in the character of their crust and the chemical composition of their principal ingredients. This they have maintained through centuries, and in dicate nothing like a state of fusion of the interior during the rapid passage from the limits of the atmosphere to the earth. "The chemical elements of which meteoric masses consist, upon which Barzelius has thrown so much light, are the same as those which we encounter scattered through the crust of the earth. They consist of eight metals-iron, nickel, cobalt, manganese, chrome, copper, arsenic, and tin; five earths-potash and soda, sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon; in all, one third of the entire number of simple substances at present known. Despite this similarity to the ultimate elements into which inorganic bodies are chemically decomposable, the appearance of meteoric masses has still something that is generally strange to us: the kind of combination of the elements is unlike all that our terrestrial mountain and rocky masses exhibit. The native iron, which is met with in almost the whole of them, gives them a peculiar, but not therefore a lunar character; for, in other regions of space, in other planetary bodies besides the moon, water may be entirely wanting, and processes of oxidation may be rare." Von Humboldt, after some further discussion of this point, says "Wherefore should not-and here I might refer to a remarkable conversation between Newton and Conduit at Kensingtonwherefore should not the matter belonging to a |