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POPULAE SCIENCE MONTHLY 



devoted to the Mexican falls, or Dr. Brezina, of Vienna, to those of 

 Europe, only can correct erroneous nomenclature of this kind. 



Again it is entailed, in the trials of a collector's work, to find some 

 of his ' falls ' spurious, that the specimens are illegitimate or are ter- 

 restrial; an accident which may awaken irreverence in the lay mind, 

 but which has sent a shock — often salutary — throughout the commu- 

 nity of ' star-gatherers.' 



All falls or finds are recorded — generally in a description author- 

 itatively made by the finder or a scientific acquaintance — and the ob- 

 jective goal to be reached by collectors is to have a representation of all 

 such occurrences. Obviously size or weight is significant, and it is not 



CUERNAVACA, MAIN MASS. 



unnatural for a layman to insist upon the superiority of a smaller col- 

 lection with handsome examples over a larger collection where the spec- 

 imens are diminutive or insignificant. The masses of various localities 

 differ also greatly in size, the amount of material falling varying enor- 

 mously in different falls, and so the value of a particular kind of 

 meteorite is conditioned upon its initial size. It is quite evident that a 

 mass of one thousand grams will not admit of such attractive subdi- 

 vision as one of five thousand, and, in the case of the Angra-dos-Reis 

 aerolite, one of the rarest of meteorites, there is not enough to ' go 

 round.' The Angra-dos-Eeis unit also possesses peculiar lithological 

 features, which naturally enhance the value given to it by its physical 

 diminutiveness. 



