286 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



ous to greasy lustre. Found at Branchville, Fairfield Coun- 

 ty, Conn. ; described by G. J. Brush and E. S. Dana. 



Vietinghojite. A highly ferriferous variety of samarskite, 

 from the neighborhood of Lake Baikal, in the Ural ; de- 

 scribed by Yon Kokscharof. 



METEORITES. 



In the last volume of the llecord, allusion was made to the 

 native iron of Ovifak, Greenland, which was first described 

 by its discoverer, Professor Nordenskiold, as of meteoric ori- 

 gin. A recent memoir, by Dr. J. Lawrence Smith, published 

 in the Comptes Rendus of the French Academy, is an impor- 

 tant contribution to our knowledge of the subject. Dr. Smith 

 expresses himself strongly in favor of the theory of the ter- 

 restrial origin of the iron, and mentions a number of argu- 

 ments which seem to prove this conclusively. One of the 

 most important of these is derived from the microscopic study 

 of the rock in which the masses of iron occur; by which means 

 the iron is discovered to be scattered in minute grains through 

 its mass, and so intimately mixed with the feldspar as to im- 

 ply a contemporaneous origin. 



Dr. Smith also shows that certain other masses of native 

 iron, discovered during the past sixty years at different points 

 on the Greenland coast, and which have been called meteor- 

 ites, are remarkably similar to the Ovifak iron, and, with that, 

 are probably in fact terrestrial. The occurrence of this native 

 iron may be explained either as argued by Steenstrup as 

 due to the reduction of the oxide by the carbonaceous mate- 

 rial through which the basalt has been ejected, or else by 

 assuming that the iron itself was thrown up with the basalt 

 from some profound depth. 



The locality of the iron described, at Ovifak, near Disco, 

 was visited during the past summer by Captain Tyson and 

 his party, on board the schooner Florence. Both he and Mr. 

 O. T. Sherman, the meteorologist of the Howgate expedition, 

 brought away a number of interesting specimens of the iron, 

 and of the basalt which contains it. 



Of true meteorites, several have been described during the 

 past year as those of Grosnaja, of Stiilldalen, of Tieschitz, 

 and of Vavilovka. None of them, however, offer any points 

 of peculiar interest. 



