The earliest systematic catalogue of meteorite collections is that of Otto Buchner in 1863, in which he listed 264 meteorites preserved in 89 collections. Thirty years later E. A. Wülfing, after circularizing 350 mineralogical and other collections, gave preliminary results for more than 500 meteorites with a total weight of 18,514 kilograms (18½ metric tons) preserved in 105 collections. This information was further elaborated in his valuable book in 1897, in which is given the weight in grams of individual meteorites in each collection.

At that time Wülfing recognized 536 known meteorites. Now there are very many more–1347 according to the latest published list (C. F. Leonard, 1946, below) and 46 others have been noticed in ‘Mineralogical Abstracts’ since 1940. Wülfing's data, compiled for July 1893, is now, after more than half a century, much more out of date than he found Buchner's data after an interval of thirty years. To digest all the information now available would be an enormous task.