Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/26

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securing meteorites, and the details of falls, their date and locality, the comparison of types of meteorites, their mineralogical components arid their many physical peculiarities have been so carefully recorded and studied that a special science has resulted, and a special group of students, whose rivalry is more animated than that generally discovered elsewhere amongst collectors of one kind of natural object.

The collection and the collector of meteorites have, with few exceptions, been features of the nineteenth century only. Previous to that these wonderful objects elicited surprise, and perhaps superstitious regard. Only within the nineteenth century did their careful comparison and study begin. All such collections as the great cabinets of Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin and the many smaller ones distributed through Europe have been slowly formed, the actual supply of material being dependent on meteorological incident and the results of travel and observation. In America, the larger collections at Yale, Harvard,