CONSTITUTION OF METEORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5490, 21 June 1879, Page 7

CONSTITUTION OF METEORS.

The Paris Academy, says Nature, haa just awarded the Lalande medal to M. Stanislas Meunier for his researches into the constitution of meteors. M. Daubree had already shown that there existed a close connection between these falling bodies and the lower strata of oar own globe. M. Meunier has carried the same line of research further and proved that this analogy is not confined alone to mineralogical constitution, but that it extends to the relations which these cosmical materials, disseminated in space, present when compared amongst themselves. The Academy considered that M. Meunier had reason to conclude from his experiences that all the masses once belonged to a considerable globe, like this earth, of true geological epochs, and that later it was decomposed into separate fragments, nnder the action of causes difficult to define exactly, bat which have more than once been seen in operation in the sky itself. Such a conclusion, it is remarked, adds greatly to the interest attaching to these as " minute stars." The astronomer, once occupied only with their motions and their probable distribution in space, finds himself confronted with a sidereal geology, as he was already under the necessity of having regard to celestial physics, celestial chemistry, and celestial mineralogy.