METEORITE STUDIES— I. 



By Oliver Cumaungs Farrington. 



LONG ISLAND, PHILLIPS COUNTY, KANSAS. 



MUSEUM NUMBER Me. 420. 



Nearly all of this great meteorite is possessed by the Museum 

 and this has been the case since the opening of the institution in June, 

 1894, but it has never been fully described. A few lines were devoted 

 to the meteorite and a cut of it shown in the catalogue of the meteorite 

 collection published in August, 1895.* A petrographic description 

 from fragments of the stone was also given by E. Weinschenk in 



i8 9 5-t 



No account of the finding of the stone seems ever to have been 

 published however and there are many other features which are 

 well worthy of description. For details regarding the occurrence of 

 the stone I am indebted to Prof. Williston of the University of Kan- 

 sas and Prof. Willard of the Kansas Agricultural College. Prof. 

 Williston states that a fragment of the meteorite first reached him in 

 the fall of 1892. Prof. Willard secured one at about the same time. 

 On recognizing the meteoritic nature of the fragments sent them, 

 Profs. Williston and Willard at once entered upon negotiations for 

 the purchase of the mass and soon became its possessors. The work 

 of collecting the pieces at the original locality was done by Prof. 

 Willard, and to him I am indebted for information regarding the 

 occurrence there. 



The meteorite lay, he states, on a slope of the ordinary soil of the 

 upland prairie region. There is no outcrop of rock in the immediate 

 vicinity and none within several miles, so far as he knows. Where 

 there is an outcrop the rock is limestone. The distribution of the 

 pieces of the meteorite as first seen by Prof. Willard was such as to 

 indicate that the mass had struck upon the slope and its front portion 

 being stopped, the rear portion had broken up and gone ahead. The 

 four large pieces which are put together to make the mass shown in 



* Field Columbian Museum Publication 3, p. 59. 

 t Tscb. Min. u. Petr. Mittlt., Vol. 14, p. 471. 



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