Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/65

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THE INITIAL CATASTROPHE
41

being warm to the touch their hearts are still cosmically cold. The Dhurmsala meteorite falling into moist earth was found an hour afterwards coated with frost. The Mart Iron.
(Proc. Wash. Acad. of Sci. vol. II. plate VI.)
Agassiz likened it to the Chinese culinary chef d'œuvre "fried ice." It is the cold of space, 200° or more Centigrade below zero, that they bear within, proof of their cosmic habitat.

That they are bits of a once larger mass is evident on their face. Their shape shows that they are not wholes but parts, while their constitution bespeaks them anything but elementary. Diagnosis of it yields perhaps their most interesting bit of news. For it shows their origin. Their autopsy proves them to contain thirty known elements, and not one that is new. The list includes all the substances most common on the Earth's surface, which is suggestive; but, what is still more instructive, these are combined into minerals which largely differ from those with which we are super-