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Further Notes on Fluid Cavities in Meteorites. 



By Heinrich Hensoldt. 



(Communicated November 24, 1882.) 



Whatever information I am personally enabled to give respecting 

 the meteorite of Braunfels is contained in the paper on Fluid 

 Cavities, which I read last year before the Club ; and I am afraid 

 I can add but little of value or importance in a possible discussion 

 with experts. Nor am I personally in a position to maintain such 

 a discussion, for I am neither deeply learned in mineralogy nor an 

 authority on meteorites. I can merely render an account of facts 

 as they have been brought before me bearing on this question, and 

 of experiments which may either support or weaken the conclusions 

 I have drawn from them (viz., the facts). The conclusions may 

 be erroneous, but the facts remain; and if the former should be 

 the case I need scarcely apologise to the Club for communicating 

 them in a paper, for the refuted arguments would then acquire a 

 negative value by facilitating the true explanation of the facts. 



Since the publication of my paper in the Journal of the Club it 

 has repeatedly come to my knowledge, more as a rumour than in 

 the shape of any distinct information, that such and such an 

 authority had expressed his doubts as to the meteoric character of 

 the specimen described by me as the meteorite of Braunfels. In only 

 two instances am I directly acquainted with the opinions of scientists 

 of repute respecting the subject, which opinions I will mention 

 before proceeding with other observations. Mr. Fletcher, of the 

 British Museum, to whom I had submitted a fragment of the 

 material for examination, stated that in his opinion it was not 

 meteoric, and that the substance which I had considered to be 

 metallic iron was in reality Hematite. The Custodian of the 

 Mineralogical Cabinet of Vienna wrote to my father that there 

 could be no doubt as to the presence of metallic iron in the speci- 

 men, but that in his belief the latter was the produce of a melting 

 furnace of iron-ore, a kind of ferruginous slag, such as might be 

 met with in the neighbourhood of an iron foundry, or be found in 



