Excerpt from The Ward-Coonley Collection of Meteorites

Meteorites, as Humboldt pointed out, are the only medium with which the inhabitants of the earth are brought into inter planetary and also into interstellar space. They have. There fore, a fascination for the ordinary man's mind which nothing terrestrial can have.

A survey of the heavens, with the naked eye or by the aid of a telescope. Fills our minds with wonder and awe, mingled with intense curiosity as to what the brilliant celestial bodies may possibly mean. But when the meteoric globe sails across the sky and falls asa solid mass, our awe is none the less. But our curiosity is largely satisfied, the meteorite has told us one of the tales of other worlds than ours. The writer has for more than a half century felt the fascination of this subject. And for more than twenty years past he has given much time to collecting and studying these interesting cosmic bodies in every part of the world where he has travelled, and where they have been found. The collection enumerated on the following pages is the result of these activities. It represents 424 distinct falls and finds, about four-fifths of all the meteorites known to science, and which are stored mainly in the great museums of the world, as well as in the cabinets of private amateur collectors. It contains specimens of the oldest falls - those of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries - which were observed and collected at those early periods, as well as those which, at the commence ment of the present century, first challenged and secured accept ance by European savants of their extra-terrestrial character. Among the former are Elbogen and Ensisheim, among the latter the Pallas Iron and l'aigle.

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