260 Mr Allan on a mass of Native Iron 



ceived from his son, Mr Woodbine Parish, his Majesty's Con- 

 sul-General at Buenos Ayres, among which I was surprised 

 and much pleased to find two masses of native iron, exactly 

 similar to the celebrated Siberian block, made known to the 

 scientific world through the exertions of Pallas, having the 

 same vesicular structure, and containing the same straw-yellow 

 coloured olivine firmly imbedded. 



I immediately suggested to Mr Parish the propriety of los- 

 ing no time in making this discovery known, and thereby se- 

 cure to his son the merit of bringing it before the public ; and 

 in order to do this in the most effectual manner, I advised him 

 to present one of the masses to the Royal Society of London, 

 and the other to the Royal Society of Edinburgh ; and it is 

 with pleasure that I now find myself deputed to carry his 

 wishes with respct to this Society into execution, by presenting 

 one of the masses as a donation to this institution in the name 

 of his son. 



Hitherto the Siberian mass has stood unrivalled, and quite 

 unique. A mass found in Poland in 1809 was said to have 

 resembled it, being vesicular, and having the cavities covered 

 internally with a yellowish-green vitreous substance ; but it 

 would have required the cavities in the iron to be filled with 

 that substance, to have rendered it similar to the Siberian 

 ma$s. The other native irons have, I believe, uniformly pre- 

 sented a solid structure, or else, though technically termed 

 spongy, were wholly composed of metallic iron, alloyed as 

 they all are with nickel. It is consequently interesting to 

 find that a mineral so entirely similar to that of Siberia, should 

 have been found abounding in the opposite hemisphere, as ap- 

 pears by the following very curious statement contained in the 

 extracts of two letters from Buenos Ayres, and so abounding 

 as to render it a matter of great astonishment. 



" Account received by Dr Redhead of the Native Iron from 

 the Province of Atacama. 



" The specimens were taken from a heap of the same na- 

 ture, esteemed at about three quintals. They exist at the 

 mouth of a vein of solid iron (barra,) half a yard wide, situ- 

 ated at the foot of a mountain. The opposite plain is strewed 



