147 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 



VOL. III. 1852-53. No. 43. 



Seventieth Session. 



Monday, 6th December 1852. 



Sir T. M. BRISBANE, Bart., President, in the Ghair. 



The following Communications were read : — 



1. On a supposed Meteoric Stone, alleged to have fallen in 

 Hampshire in September 1852. By Dr George Wil- 

 son. 



The object of this communication was to exhibit to the Society a 

 mineral which had been publicly described as a meteoric stone, picked 

 up by a witness of its fall. The author had been induced, by the 

 pubhshed account of the alleged fall of the stone, to make inquiry 

 concerning it, and had ascertained that no one had witnessed its de- 

 scent ; and that the only evidence in favour of its being a meteorite 

 was the fact of its having been noticed for the first time in a gar- 

 den-path, the morning after a thunder-storm. 



The mineral had not the characters of any known meteorite, being 

 simply a large nodule of iron pyrites or bisulphuret of iron, oxidised 

 at the surface into brown haematite. 



The author drew attention to the fact that such nodules were po- 

 pularly known, in the chalk districts of England, as " thunderbolts," 



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