Origin Of Meteorites

The question as to whonce the meteor ites come, is ono that we are not yet in a position to answer vvith certainty. The various hypotheses whioh suppose i'or them un origin in lunar volcanoes, or in our atiuosphcre, or again in a destroved tplluriiysatellite, or that would treat them as fragnients of an original planet of which the asteroids are parts, or ag masses ejected from the sun - all these hypotheses Reem to be more or loss preoluded by the kuown velocities, the retrograde motion so frequently charaeteiizing meteors and roeteroites, elso by the chemical conditions that, for instance, are involved in the passage of the meteorito through the suii's chromosphere. Wkether metorites movo or do not move in circumsolar orbits, is at present iinpossible to say ; because while with our incomplete knowledge we cannot to-day attach the oharao ter of periodicity to uny known class of meteoritos, we are not justified ín foundïng any conclusión on a negative result with so limited u, foundation. But even if all or some of them may have boen, on their encountering the earth, memben) temporarily or iiermanently of the solar system, we may with considerable probabilityeonsider them as having originally entercd our system from the interstellar spaces beyond it. Such at least must be our conclusión if we are to admit the uuity of the whole class of phenomena of meteoritos and falling stars. For, the orbits of the two best known meteoric streams, those namely of August and November, have been identiüed with the orbits of two cometu, and in regard to one of these (that of November) L?verrier has shown, with great probability, that as a meteoric cloud it entered and became a meinberof our system only some 1,700 years ago in eonsequenoe of the attraetion of Uranus, while the August meteoric i'ing only differs in this respect from it, that it had at a rauch more remote period found an clliptic orbit round the sun, - we are constrained on tho assumption with which we started, to iecognize also in a meteorito a visitor from the regions of remóte spaco. And so far as it goos, the observation by Seccbi that the November falling stars oxkibit the magnosium lines, is in