156 MEMOIRS NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, VOL. XIII. 



5. 1885: Beezina. Wiener Sammlung, pp. 211 and 234. 



6. 1887: Kunz. On some American meteorites. — 3. Is the East-Tennessee meteoric from Whitfield County, Georgia? 



Amer. Journ. Sci., 3d ser., vol. 34, pp. 473^475. (Analysis and diagram.) 



7. 1894: Cohen. Meteoritenkunde, p. 193. 



DANVILLE. 



Near Danville, Morgan County, Alabama. 

 Latitude 34° 25' N., longitude 87° 4' W. 

 Stone. Gray chondrite, veined (Cga) of Brezina. 

 Fell 5 p. m., November 27, 1868; described 1870. 

 Weight, 2 kgs. (4.5 lbs.). 



Knowledge of this meteorite is confined almost wholly to the account by Smith ' which is 

 as follows: 



On Friday evening, November 27, 1868, about 5 o'clock, Mr. T. F. Freeman, of Danville, Alabama, on stepping 

 from his house, was startled by a loud report so much like artillery that for the moment it was attributed to the firing 

 of a small piece kept in the village; but on inquiry it was found that no firing had taken place there but that the sound 

 was heard at the village, and attributed to very heavy artillery at Decatur, Trinity, Hillsboro, or some other point to 

 the northward of Danville. * * * 



The following day Mr. William Brown, living 3 miles west of Danville, brought to the village a piece of rock which 

 he said fell near hiin and some laborers who were picking cotton. He dug it up at a depth of about 1.5 to 2 feet. It 

 weighed about 4.5 pounds and had the characteristic aspects of a meteoric stone but it was broken by the party obtaining 

 it and all but about half a pound, now in my possession, had been scattered and probably lost or thrown away. 



Several other stones fell in the same vicinity. Some negroes working in a cotton field on the plantation of Capt. 

 McDaniel, half a mile from Danville, heard a body fall with a whizzing, humming sound, and strike the ground near 

 them with tremendous force but they were alarmed and did not approach the spot that night; a rain fell during the 

 night and no trace of it could be found next day. Various other stones were heard to fall in different parts of the 

 adjacent country. Two brothers by the name of Wallace were plowing in their field, about 1.75 miles northwest of 

 Danville, they distinctly heard two or three fainter reports after the first loud one and heard the sound of two falling 

 bodies whizzing down, one to the right and the other to left of them. 



With the above data and the known geography of the country its direction must have been northeast and south- 

 west, but it is impossible to say from which of these quarters it came. 



The portion of the meteorite that I possess has a large part of it covered with the usual black crust. Its general 

 aspect is rough and dull; a portion of the outer surface, not covered with the black coating, was nevertheless a surface 

 which it had when it reached the ground for on this surface are streaks and little patches of bright, pitchy matter which 

 was once fused, and was derived either from another part of the coating that was thrown off in a melted state from the 

 coated portion, and whipped around as it were on to the unfused surface as the stone fell through the air, or from an 

 incipient fusion that was begun on the denuded surface and arrested by the termination of the fall. Where the black 

 crust reaches the denuded places it appears to be rounded off as if it had been melted matter passing from one portion 

 of the stone and rolled over the surface of the borders. 



The broken surface has a dark gray color and is somewhat oolitic in structure, but not as much so as many other 

 meteoric stones. There are veins and patches of a slate-colored mineral running through it. Pyrites and iron are also 

 to be seen diffused through the stone; thin flakes of the iron give that slickensided appearance to a fracture not unfre- 

 quently seen in this class of bodies. There seems to be more of iron in the slate-colored mineral than in other parts. 

 There are a few patches of white mineral which may be enstatite. The specific gravity of the stone is 3.398. 



For further examination a portion of the meteorite was mechanically separated into three parts, the pyrites, the 

 metallic iron, and the earthy minerals. As in the case of most meteorites the earthy minerals were so intermixed that 

 it was impossible to separate the different varieties, three of which were easily traceable by the eye. 



The iron separated with great care from the pulverized meteorite constitutes 3.092 per cent of the entire mass, and 

 an analysis furnished : 



Fe Ni Co Cu PS 



89.513 9.050 0.521 minute 0.019 0.105 =99.208 



quantity 



The sulphide of iron detached very carefully from the mass of the meteorite gave: 



Fe 61.11 



S 39.56 



100. 67 

 which corresponds with the prosulphid of iron, FeS. Whether it contains any troilite was not determined. 

 The stony minerals were freed as much as possible from iron and pyrites and reduced to — 



Soluble portion 60. 88 



Insoluble portion 39. 12 



100. 00 



