Cosmic Dust

Abstract

I FOUND in the Nieuws van den Dag of December 28, 1883, that a violet sand had been found in the dunes (probably near Scheveningen). The paragraph runs as follows:—When seen under the microscope (feeble magnifying) the ordinary yellow sand seemed to be composed for the greater part of almost white transparent grains, among which were a few light yellow, and pink, and single black grains. The violet sand, however, showed almost all the grains imbibed by a light violet tint, and moreover it contained a very great number of black glittering grains. An idea which occurred to me made me take up a small magnet, and on stirring with it in a glass full of the sand, the ends were covered by feathers formed by the black grains quite the same as the feathers which are formed on putting a magnet into filed dust. Probably I had there grains of a combination of iron; of the latter there was a great deal in it. Now this is the question: Are these grains of the same kind as those which the naturalists have found and gathered on the snow-fields in the Polar regions, thus called cosmic dust?