[footnote] *The remarkable passage in Plut., 'de plac. Philos.', ii., 13, runs thus: "Anaxagoras teaches that the surrounding ether is a fiety substance, which, by the power of its rotation, tears rocks from the earth, inflames them, and converts them into stars." Applying an ancient fable to illustrate a physical dogma, the Clazomenian appears to have ascribed the fall of the Nemæan Lion to the Peloponnesus from the Moon to such a rotatory or centrifugal force. (Ælian., xii., 7; Plut., 'de Facie in Orge Lunæ' c. 24; Schol. ex Cod. Paris., in 'Apoll. Argon.', lib. i., p. 498, ed. Schaef., t. ii., p. 40; Meineke, 'Annal. Alex.', 1843, p. 85.) Here, instead of stones from the Moon, we have an animal from the Moon! According to an acute remark of Böckh, the ancient mythology of the Nemæan lunar lion has an astronomical origin, and is symbolically connected in chronology with the cycle of intercalation of the lunar year, with the moon-worship at Nemæa, and the games by which it was accompanied. These views must not, therefore, be confounded with what is commonly termed the telluric or atmospheric origin of meteoric stones, nor yet with the singular opinion of Aristotle, which supposed the enormous mass of Ægos Potamos to have been raised by a hurricane. That rrogant spirit of incredulity, which rejects facts without attempting to investigate them, is in some cases almost more injurious than an unquestioning credulity. Both are alike detrimental to the force of investigation. Notwithstanding that for more than two thousand years the annals of different nations had recorded falls of meteoric stones, many of which had been attested beyond all doubt by the evidence of irreproachable eye-witnesses -- notwithstanding the important part enacted by the Bætylia in the meteor-worship of the ancients -- notwithstanding the fact of the companions of Cortez having see an aërolite at Cholula which had fallen on the neighboring pyramid -- notwithstanding that califs and Mongolian chiefs had caused swords to be forged from recently-fallen meteoric stones -- nay, notwithstanding that several persons had been struck dead by stones falling from heaven, as for instance, a monk at Crema on the 4th of September, 1511, another monk at Milan in 1650, and two Swedish sailors on board ship in 1674, yet this great cosmical phenomenon remained almost wholly unheeded, and its intimate connection drawn to the subject by Chladni, who had already gained immortal renown by his discovery of the sound-figures. He who is penetrated with a sense of this mysterious connection, and whose mind is open to deep impressions of nature, will feel himself moved by the deepest and most solemn emotion at the sight of every star that shoots across the vault of heaven, no less than at the glorious spectacle of meteoric swarms in the November phenomenon or on St. Lawrence's day. Here motion is suddenly revealed in the midst of nocturnal rest. The still radiance of the vault of