To this the doctor replied: “If my friend here has really finished talking for a while I will say, Thorwald, that the theories already spoken of seem to be disproved by the discovery that these stones enter the earth’s atmosphere with a planetary velocity. A body falling from an infinite distance--that is, impelled only by the attraction of gravitation--would strike the earth with a velocity of only six or seven miles a second, while the meteorites come at the rate of twenty to thirty miles a second, the earth’s rate of revolution being nineteen miles in the same time. It is found that a necessary consequence of these velocities is that the meteors move about the sun, and not the earth, as the controlling body. Our latest study points to the conclusion that they are of cometary origin, and, as comets have been known to divide, some scientists believe the meteorites are fragments of exploded comets. At any rate, they are found in the company of these mysterious bodies, and appear to have similarly eccentric orbits.” “Your studies are leading you in the right direction,” said Thorwald. “The meteorites do indeed come from the regions of space, and if they have any story to tell it is a story of those distant parts of the universe about which any testimony is valuable. Let us look again at the fragment we are supposed to hold in our hand. Can we tell of what it is composed, or is its substance something entirely new? I am sure you must have analyzed it down to its minutest particle, and if so you have found it contains nothing foreign to the earth. There is not a single element in the meteorite that does not exist also in the crust of the earth. Tell me, Doctor, how many elements have you discovered in them?” “Nearly thirty,” answered the doctor. “And one interesting fact is, that the three elements most common in the earth--iron, silicon, and oxygen--are also found most widely distributed among the meteorites.” “That is an exceedingly significant fact,” said Thorwald; “and now do you not see how strongly the meteorites confirm the story of the spectrum, and how everything tells us the universe is one in its physical structure? By these two widely different sources of information you find that beyond doubt other heavenly bodies are made of like materials with the earth. Is it not time now to give your imagination just a moment’s play and look upon some of those distant orbs as the probable abode of life?”