GEOLOGY. 363 



of the same material, though he gathered up numerous small fragments, 

 which proved to be ordinary charcoal. 



Mr. Scriven (the father) was so much struck with the appearance of the 

 black fibres, together with the circumstances under which they had been 

 found, that he requested his son to call on Dr. William Pettigrew, the fam- 

 ily physician, and describe to him what had happened. Two days, how- 

 ever, elapsed, before Dr. Pettigrew heard of the case. He immediately 

 repaired to the house, where he was informed of the particulars as above 

 described, and shown a mere pinch of the matter that had been detached 

 from the fence, the principal portion of it having unfortunately been 

 given to a young man of the neighborhood, an engineer, who wished to 

 exhibit it to his friends. 



Dr. Pettigrew immediately called to acquaint me of the case; but not 

 finding me at home, we did not meet until the forenoon of the 20th, when 

 he presented me the specimen gathered by Scriven, and took me to the 

 spot. 



I heard the statements repeated from the different members of the family, 

 corroborative of those above presented, and examined the place upon the 

 board from whence the fibres had been gathered. It presented no discol- 

 oration or appearance of having been heated or charred, though for many 

 inches on either side, it was slightly blackened in spots. This, perhaps, 

 was not strange, as heavy rains had fallen since the occurrence; and it 

 might fairly be presumed that all foreign matter would have been effect- 

 ually detached. I examined the grass and soil on both sides of the fence, 

 without finding anything beyond little fragments of charcoal, which are 

 common enough in most places about the premises of houses. We then 

 took pains to find the individual to whom had been given the principal 

 portion of the fibrous matter obtained from the fence; but had the mortifi- 

 cation to discover that, having worn it in a paper wrapper for several days 

 in his vest pocket, he had finally mislaid or lost it. Thus little more than 

 a microscopically visible specimen of the shooting star remained for study 

 and examination. Its entire weight is probably less than one-tenth of a 

 grain. When viewed by a single pocket lens, it seems to be a confused ag- 

 gregate of short clippings of the finest black hair, varying in length from 

 one-tenth to one-third of an inch. Each portion is straight, or only slightly 

 curved. Except in color, they remind one most of that variety of pumice- 

 stone from the Sandwich Islands, known as volcanic hair, or as "Pete's 

 hair." They do not seem very prone to break in handling, and appear 

 slightly elastic. 



They have been examined under compound microscopes of high power 

 by several persons accustomed to the use of this instrument ; but hitherto 

 no one has ventured to suggest a relationship in their properties to any 

 known form of organic or inorganic matter. The following description is 

 from a note handed to me by my friend, Dr. F. W. Porcher, of Charleston. 

 " Black elongated bodies, perfectly opaque, round and solid ; amorphous, 

 not properly smooth surfaces, often furnished with warty dots or projections; 

 rather glossy." 



I could spare only a few of them for a chemical trial. These were intro- 

 duced into a small glass test-tube (previously well dried), and heated by con- 

 tact with the flame of the blow-pipe. They suddenly glowed with a brilliant 

 light, at the same time emitting an odor most nearly resembling the bitu- 

 minous. A distinct grayish skeleton of each fibre was left adhering to the 



