then they conveyed it from the spot, and many
pieces were broken from it, which the Land Vogt forbade. They therefore
caused it to be placed in the church, with the intention of suspending
it as a miracle, and there came here many people to see this stone, so
there were many remarkable conversations about this stone; the learned
said they knew not what it was, for it was beyond the ordinary course of
nature that such a large stone should smite from the height of the air,
but that it was really a miracle from God, for before that time never
was anything heard like it, nor seen, nor written. When they found that
stone, it had entered into the earth to half the depth of a man's
stature, which everybody explained to be the will of God that it should
be found, and the noise of it was heard at Lucerne, at Villingen, and at
many other places, so loud that the people thought that the houses had
been overturned; and as the King Maximilian was here, the Monday after
St. Catherine's Day of the same year, his Royal Excellency ordered the
stone which had fallen to be brought to the castle, and after having
conversed a long time about it with the noblemen, he said that the
people of Ensisheim should take it and order it to be hung up in the
church, and not to allow anybody to take anything from it. His
Excellency, however, took two pieces of it, of which he kept one, and
sent the other to Duke Sigismund of Austria, and there was a great deal
of talk about the stone, which was suspended in the choir, where it
still is, and a great many people came to see it."

Admitting the celestial origin of the meteorites, they surely claim our
closest attention. They afford the only direct method we possess of
obtaining a knowledge of the materials of bodies exterior to our planet.
We can take a meteorite in our hands, we can analyse it, and find the
elements of which it is composed. We shall not attempt to enter into any
very detailed account of the structure of meteorites; it is rather a
matter for the consideration of chemists and mineralogists than for
astronomers. A few of the more obvious features will be all that we
require. They will serve as a preliminary to the discussion of the
probable origin of these bodies.

In the Natural History Museum at South Kensington we may examine a
superb collection of meteorites. They have been brought together from
all parts of the earth, and vary in size from bodies not much larger
than a pin's head up t